do you no who i am? identify me 2024.

do you no who i am? identify me 2024.

in 2023 a long term project was started between interpol and the police forces of germany, belgium and the netherlands, to try to give back the names of victims of crime, often happened years ago, and often with a nasty story , but more important with victims unknown and often as the result the perpetrators are not seen a court too.

maybe full justice can not even be served anymore, the least we can try is give the victims their names and identity back. i wrote we, because it will be up to the public to look at the information and see if they remember anything at all. it can be done!

this first series of unnamed victims was 22, one case got quickly an update, what was known as the woman with the flower tattoo ended up to be a british woman, this result at least did give answers to her family.

there is a video in english from a interview of her sister about it all worked out;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm3u2JMxA-0

this woman rita was missing from 1992 on, a very different time of course, and a serious long time ago. there are many more stories known, where police and the family each worked their end of these cases, but where the connection never did fall in the same places.

this year the project goes on, there are extra cases listed, many new to us, but with cold cases that sounds strange to write.

how can you find the information?

in this link; https://www.interpol.int/What-you-can-do/Identify-Me

the information in the videos is done with care and even there can be not nice pictures, they are only used if they do contain information. the woman, at least this project started mostly with woman, it is still unknown how it ever will grow out as an initiative, can come from everywhere, there are cases from italy, spain and france too, and europe is still a land that is often visited for holidays, city trips, work related things, so the country a body was found has no say it is a person from that county.
the first case that ended in giving a victim a name back shows that too, a woman from cardiff in the uk, found in antwerp, belgium, that also had stayed in large dutch cities.

as we meet all kinds of people during our lives, and many do not stay forever around us, it still can help to take a look, it is not always really a known missing person too, also material like jewelry and clothing can be recognised and of help to find a nearer date or an area something was a bit unique too.

often other countries give publicity to this project too, some by national news, others have real crime series on tv, like crimewatch in the uk,’ opsporing verzocht’ in the netherlands.
information can be made known over the lines given in the interpol information in this link;
https://www.interpol.int/What-you-can-do/Identify-Me
or through any other line into police, but most countries have nowadays also their own organisations or phone numbers you can give your tip of anonymously .

it does not even need to be a name to one of these victims of crime, information about all kind of things is asked. and something simple as recognising where a piece of clothing was sold can be just the next piece that gives an opening to get to the answers needed.

sharing a project like this, and talk about it could help too of course in reaching just more people.

most police forces in your own country often have also online information asked about people found deceased without a name. often more a mix of males, females and even children. it can help to just look at them, and if you have information to make that known.
it asks a public effort to give them their names back, as usually law enforcement reached the end to investigate, because there is simply not enough information.

In this locale we still heavily rely on that good old prehistoric mode of communication - word of mouth!  It works faster and more effectively than any form of technology and/or contemporary policing.

Whilst the big boss sits on it's throne drumming it's fingers on the desk, humming and hawing, waiting for answers to the tasks it hands down to the little soldiers, the grapevine is busily working in the background.

How else would they so quickly discover that a little missing child is not hidden under a boat on the shores of the Atlantic, or secretly buried on a hill overlooking a popular tourist resort? Or being carted around the lowlands by a band of gypsies!

All avenues are open to menace but any seasoned well respected cop would be able to easily shift the wheat from the chaff.  Just talk to the right people and all will be revealed.

Bit like worker ants, there's no stopping them!

You want to solve a crime?  Then get off your backside and go talk to people out there on the street.

the victims in these cases are already found, often the exact crime is not even fully known, from the majority of the dutch cases i have heard about it when they were found. some i do remember from the listings in unknown and deceased list at the police website, some you heard a bit through local news sites.

it are not cases that are easily or simply declared not solvable and shelf them.

when people are actually are missing it still hangs a lot on the activity of the family and others from the inner circles take it on.

but in both it is hard to investigation when you do not have information to work from. so i like the initiative very much. that is goes international is a good think, most would not have to had a bod to the area they have been found in.

i know there are very good teams looking into these cases and many bodies of old cases are taken up again to get dna samples of them, manual ready also isotope results. face reconstructions are nowadays possible by computer, so many have had a remake too.

many of these people had maybe not an ideal life before they died, still giving back their names, and maybe bring an answer about what happened to a member of that family is a good thing too.

most of these cases are not forgotten, officers whop work them keep often a copy of the file in their desk, some on top of it, some even store a copy at home, even when they reach their pension. are active in asking new eyes on the floor to take a look.
but it is simply lack of information and a lot you can know of people starts simply with a name.

there still is not a a good system that can knit cases from one country to another, so at least some of these can belonging to what in another countries is a missing person. we had last year such a case, a young woman who was missing for many years, she was found not that much later in germany in a artificial lake, and buried there as unnamed. just because the systems had no connection. a case that brought a lot of gossip out and about, that would not have been needed.

and that can be behind many of these cases too. they have been living in all kind of roles in other peoples lives, most just been dumped somewhere, many murdered. and as a result of that their names are not known. it would be great to change that.
looking at the information and talking about them is the last option, why not use it!

today we have in our news headlines news about a missing person, she was missing on 13 july 1990 from stein in the southern part of the netherlands, only today is know she died, long ago, because on the other side of the border between the netherlands and belgium on 20 may 1991 a skull was found. geographically stein and maasmechelen, where theskull was found is just a very small distance.

nothing happened and in these years belgium was not in a habit to get a dna profile from human remains. so it already took up to 2012 before that happened, later it even was put up in the belgium dna databank at the nicc.

but it all had to wait for a bit of law to get changed and the dna profile could be shared with another important interpol project, called i familia, a databank where dna of a missing person, or what often is the case that of near biological relatives to be screened against finds of unidentified human remains. relatives put their dna voluntary in this databank.

this is why sharing information about missing persons is important, not keep it within borders, there still cannot be said case closed, but it is a clear answer for the family to know she died.

where the selecting for the project identify me most likely is already beyond a stage of matching dna profiles, having the possibility to share information over borders is important. this is the second case of a missing woman from the netherlands that was missing, but also both found in neighbouring countries. in both cases the information did not got back and fort over the border, in the case of today you can almost see the place from one to the other.

and it is so strange when alive you can travel the border freely at want, but for so many years the work in looking for the missing was divided to each its own country.

this is the link to i familia at interpol;
https://www.interpol.int/How-we-work/Forensics/I-Familia

both these projects are milestones in searching for missing people and missing identities, i many countries there are still laws that can be changed to make such efforts so much better.

of course hearing after so many years, your family member was dead for most of the time you kept looking for them is hard, still it is often a first step in finding more out in how that happened. knowing makes it also a lesser chance for all kind of stories, false sightings, even most are well meant. how hard a loss always will be, not knowing is always said to be the worst.

for the old cases it can be harder to have effect, the story of the woman from the uk that got her identity back explains a lot about how habits of people even under these circumstances do change over time. still using new opportunities, making them known still can be of help.