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Forensic Assistance
NCMEC offers forensic services to assist law enforcement and families
with solving long-term missing child cases and cold case child homicides.
“Cold Case” Assistance
Just because a case remains unsolved for many years doesn’t make
it less important—to the family or to NCMEC. In the cases of long-term
missing children or child homicides, NCMEC can assist by:
- Age progressing photographs of children missing for two years or
more and strategically disseminating them;
- Having the cases reviewed
by former homicide detectives; and
- Developing a set of investigative
steps to recommend to law enforcement.
Identifying Remains of Deceased Children
When unidentified remains of children are discovered, NCMEC can assist
by:
- Reconstructing the face or skull to create a potentially recognizable
face. Posters of the reconstruction are then disseminated to law enforcement,
social services, court probation officers, and schools.
- Soliciting information from coroners, medical examiners, and families
to provide reference DNA samples for DNA profiling and uploading to
the federal DNA database known as “CODIS.”
- Searching for possible suspects in its child homicide/serial killer
database, which is populated with historical records of all persons
convicted of at least one child homicide.
- Accessing records of more than 2,200 cases of unidentified human
remains believed to be persons younger than 21 years old.
Additional services are available to law enforcement through NCMEC’s
collaboration with the U.S. Secret Service’s Forensic Services
Division:
- Handwriting comparison and analysis
- Polygraph services
- Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) database searches
- Photographic enhancement
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