ABSTRACT
The conceptual stage of this book began in August 2008, at the Texas Department of Public Safety presentation at the Forensic Science Forensic Training Workshop in Fort Worth, when the first 16 TXDPS cold DNA hits were presented. Most of the workshop presentations seemed to be both laborious and esoteric, with little attention paid to the development of investigative strategies. Other conferences, although their presentations may have been deeply moving, were essentially based upon series of stories that were meant to elicit emotional reactions (e.g., the Identify the Missing Conference held in Philadelphia in 2005, which became a model for many future conferences). Developments in MP/UD/UHR investigations other than the launching of the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) in 2009 have been scarce, and nearly none have occurred in the area of investigative strategies.
