About me!

Well, to start out, my name is Jessica.

Since before I can remember, puzzles were always a big hobby of mine.  No matter how difficult it was, I wanted to put it together.  I partially thank my Great Grandmother for this because she also was into puzzles.  When I would come and visit, she would always have one laid out, usually consisting of thousands of pieces and it would take weeks to complete, but we always managed to put it together.

After awhile, I was told I had a talent for 'reading people'.  I could talk to someone and see through their rage or sadness and understand the underlying cause of their distress.  I didn't re-act to aggression, I just stood back and took a bigger picture of the situation and then would try and talk with the person about what was causing them to act the way they were acting.

I learned this technique from my father.  He himself, was a puzzle.  I won't go into details but we did end up losing my father just this passed August 10th, 2013.  It was devastating and a huge shock, even though I partially saw it coming...  He would try and hide his true self, and did so quite well with most, but a few close family members and I could see through the mask and tried desperately to work with him through this issues.  I know now, his death is not my fault, but the thought that we could have done something more to prevent his death, I fear, will always be there.

Since then, I've been working out how to better my free time, as most of it was taken up by talking or visiting with my father.


I've decided to follow my hobby and actively participate in trying to help solve Missing and Unidentified Person Cases.

I didn't decide to do this out of the blue however.  Because of my fascination with puzzles, I've always had an attraction to Criminal Investigation shows.

I believe I was 14 or 15 when I started watching the TV shows that I found... I mostly stuck with shows like Oxygen's 'Snapped' and TruCrime's 'FBI Files'.  I would always turn the TV on and straight to that channel and would watch them all and then would watch them all again.  The crime itself wasn't what interested me, it was how the detectives ended up solving them.  Listening to officers and private detectives speak on the show about what they saw, how they determined a crime was committed, and what steps they took to secure evidence and then solve who had committed it, that was my passion.

I learned more then I think I would have if I would have taken a Criminal Investigation class in college.  I mean, I've heard some people talk about their 'conclusions' about a crime and find most are really 'out there'.  I like Detective Stabler from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's quote, saying in one episode, "Someone's hearing Zebras,"  When Dale Stucky asks if he missed something, Detective Benson then says, "Dale, did anybody ever tell you that if you hear hoof beats in Central Park, don’t think zebras?"  It's the same basic principle.

So for example: If you're listening to the news and a woman's been found stabbed in New York City, don't jump to it being a 'Mobster Hit'.  Although, it does happen, it's extremely rare and not the first thing people should be jumping to.

At the same time, don't take what you learn from Fictional Crime Shows like Law & Order as the devote truth.  It's a Crime Drama, it's meant to make you want to watch the show.

In any case, after watching those shows, and then watching shows later in life such as 'Wicked Attraction', 'Deadly Women', 'Cold Cases', 'Disappeared', etc, I decided I wanted to do more then just 'watch' the shows, I wanted to get involved and help.

The show 'Disappeared' is what really gave me the kick off into this however.  After watching an episode about a woman who was missing her daughter and ultimately ended up finding her on the Doe Network website herself, I came to a realization that anyone, who has some free time and wants to do some good, can help investigators by searching for answers right from their computer!  A took a few days to ponder the idea but in the end, I brought myself to find the 'Doe Network' website.

In that website, I found a wealth of information, much more then I ever thought.  I never thought there could be so many unidentified people.  Surely with all the technology now and DNA we should be able to pair up missing people with the unidentified?  It almost didn't make sense to me.  Then, after thinking about how the police who were investigating my own's father's death handled everything and how long it is still taking to get laboratory work back about him, I came to realize that there is just too much going on for an officer to actually sit down and dedicate his time to one person for so long.

For example, in Johnstown Pennsylvania, where my father was found, there are only 3 Investigating Detectives in the entire town.  This is what I was told by the police officers and the detectives themselves.  With a town full of crime, this is ridiculous.  They even divulged to me that they're working on cases now that are almost a year old, that's how far their backlog is.  How can this town ever expect to get anything done in this kind of a situation?  The answer is, they can't.

Knowing this from this town, I assumed it for a good majority of all other towns and decided to really dive right into the Doe Network.

Now I am wading through case after case of the identified and missing and for each one I come across I thought to myself, "If my father was missing, I would want to know someone out there is working on finding him."  So I decided to start this blog where I will be discussing cases that I will be going through and information I find in hopes that it will encourage others to look into the cases as well and lend their time to a great cause of uniting families with their missing loved ones or providing closure to families who have been unable to recover their family's remains.

I am not encouraging people to go out and hunt in the forest or mountains for answers, but rather to sit down and take the time to search online for answers and help connect the dots for the overworked investigators out there that are just waiting for that one phone call that will help close the case.

I dedicate these following investigations to my father who also helped me think 'outside the box' and who my family and I miss everyday.