Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of missing bodies and missing unidentified bodies nationwide.
A new bill in Missouri hopes to create standards for cold cases in the state.
It would require all law enforcement to use the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUS, which is a federally-funded database that used forensic data to help locate missing persons.
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The Missouri State Highway Patrol says there are 14,000 unidentified bodies nationwide as part of 20,000 missing bodies nationally.
Missouri Rep. Tricia Byrnes introduced this bill on Dec. 1 in response to that number, which includes a second portion aimed at obtaining funding for the DNA portion of NamUs.
“I am passionate about it because I have spent the summer talking to the detectives and to dispatchers, folks from the medical examiner’s office and a forensic anthropologist, and they’ve given me many stories on why it’s so important,” Byrnes said.
Some departments, like the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department for instance, already utilize NamUs. It’s the fact that not all Missouri departments do that inspired Byrnes’ bill.
“Our problem with the database is, it’s a great tool, but it’s not a 100% usage within the departments,” she said. “When there’s a free tool that doesn’t have 100% usage, we have to throw everything at finding people and bringing them home.”
Byrnes says another key element of the tool is that both law enforcement and families can utilize NamUs when it comes to inputting information about a missing person.
“The public is a great resource to help locate missing,” Byrnes said. “If there’s a public outcry for this, that would be extremely helpful.”
Public outcry is something Kansas City native Victoria Jackson is no stranger to.
She feels she’s done all she can to notify the public about her missing sister, Gabrielle Jackson, who went missing in May 2022.
In addition to searching social media and making several posts, she’s filed a police report with KCPD.
Over a year later, however, she says she still knows nothing.
“I’m not able to find her, and time’s passing by,” Jackson said. “It’s been a really long time. And that’s when you start to think that the worst might happen because it’s just been too long.”
Jackson was not even living in Missouri when she learned her sister was missing.
She moved to Texas months before, and it wasn’t until she got a text from her dad that she began to worry, especially since this was not the first time this happened.
“She has went missing before when we was younger,” Jackson said. “We did grow up poor, so we was in situations we didn’t want to be in of course.”
This time around, however, Gabrielle was 21 and neither she, nor her two other sisters were kids anymore. Still, Jackson felt it was necessary to take matters into her own hands.
“One thing my mom would always tell us, as sisters, y’all stick together,” Jackson said.
Despite KCPD already using NamUS, Jackson didn’t know it existed. She said based on what she did know at the time her sister went missing, she wishes she could have been more involved in the search process.
“I had some ideas myself, of questions I could have asked, ‘Maybe you guys could do this, maybe you guys could do that,' but that wasn’t what happened,” she said.
That’s why Byrnes says awareness is something she believes could get this bill passed in the state.
“I think when they see these stories and understand how many missing people we have in Missouri,” she said. “It depends on the support we get from Missouri. It’s a really short time frame to introduce a bill in January and get it passed to the Governor’s desk by May.”
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the number of active missing persons cases in Missouri sits at 20,000. It’s a number both Jackson and Byrnes hope decreases quickly and soon.
“Any way I can, I’ll keep looking,” Jackson said.
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