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Forensic Assistance

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 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 the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (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, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (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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