How Internet sleuths solved the mystery of the 'Grateful Doe'

Driven by a love of mystery and compassion for people left waiting for answers after losing someone they care about, self-appointed armchair detectives are using the Internet to crack cold cases and bring closure to people they have never met.

A car crash victim has been identified 20 years after he was killed, thanks to help from some online amateur detectives.

Citizen sleuthing has been popular with Internet users for several years now, as curiosity about historic mysteries has inspired self-appointed detectives to try to crack high-profile cold cases like the infamous disappearance of extortionist D.B. Cooper in 1971 or the serial murders of the late 19th century committed by the assailant known only as Jack the Ripper. But some amateur detectives skills have also been applying their sleuthing skills to more recent and less publicized cases in an effort to bring closure to families.

In this case, a family now knows what happened to South Carolina native Jason Callahan, who disappeared 20 years ago at the age of 19.

Mr. Callahan was killed in a car crash in southern Virginia in 1995, but the injuries to his body left it unrecognizable. He became known as “Grateful Doe” because of a pair of Grateful Dead ticket stubs recovered from his pocket.

The “Grateful Doe” mystery captivated Internet detectives who dedicated themselves to solving the mystery. A computer-generated image of the victims face was shared online among websites dedicated to solving cases. It was those images and websites that led to the identification, two decades after his disappearance. DNA evidence has since confirmed that the young man who died in Virginia was indeed Callahan.

"I'm glad it was solved, but I'm also incredibly sad because I wanted so badly to reconnect with him," said Shannon Michelson, his half-sister, who lives in New Jersey, to the Associated Press. She hadn’t seen Callahan since he was a child.

Despite being missing for 20 years, a missing person’s report was first filed for Callahan with the Myrtle Beach Police Department in January. Callahan had a history of running away from home and his mother assumed he was traveling or living away. 

"No one ever thought to report him missing because they thought he wanted to be missing," Ms. Michelson said to the AP.

For many web detectives, the urge to help solve cold cases is driven by both a love of mysteries, as well as a desire to help people like Michelson, even though they have never met them, says Deborah Halber, a Massachusetts journalist and author of "The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases."

“What draws them is the mystery, the challenge. Nobody can really resist a mystery,” Ms. Halber" told The Christian Science Monitor around the publication of her book last year. 

“They're also eventually driven by compassion, a feeling that they'd like to provide closure for these families of missing people,” Halber added. “They realize these people are someone's daughter or wife or husband or uncle and they feel strongly that they'd like to end that agony for them.”

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How Internet sleuths solved the mystery of the 'Grateful Doe'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/1211/How-Internet-sleuths-solved-the-mystery-of-the-Grateful-Doe
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe