Deborah Halber

Halber traveled throughout the U.S., visiting people who work on, and sometimes solve, cold cases. She met with detectives, coroners and forensic doctors, and relatives of the missing, but the focus of the book is primarily on amateur sleuths, the people who spend their time on websites devoted to missing and unidentified persons. These are people who spend their free time trying to match unidentified remains, many of them decades old, that have been logged by police, to missing persons show more reports or descriptions of missing loved ones posted by relatives. These are the really cold cases, ones the police have often given up on ever solving, and the author meets with the factory workers and housewives who have done it.
The author is part of the story, giving a real first person feel of what it takes to investigate one of these cases, and many times is presented with the life story of someone who is missing by someone who loves them. She often describes what she sees ruthlessly, describing one sleuth as "a troll of a woman" and describing how dirty the woman's house is, or saying that one coroner has grasshopper legs, or calling out a sleazy hotel on its false advertising. It all creates a vivid portrait and an excellent read. show less

I could not put this book down! It provides a fascinating look at the Doe Network, an online forum that helps to put names to bodies that are found without identification. The story of the Doe Network and it's volunteers is told within the umbrella story of a Jane Doe found in 1968 in Kentucky and nicknamed Tent Girl. Tent Girl's story is pieced out over the course of the book along with many other interesting missing identity cases, some I had heard of and many I hadn't. A disturbing number show more were from my home state of Florida which is not surprising since we have a rather transient population.

Although the cases themselves were compelling, the people who reunited dead bodies with their identities were equally intriguing. Many came to the Doe Network looking for answers to their own loved ones disappearances and in the course of things ended up solving other peoples mysteries. It turns out anyone can be a modern day Sherlock Holmes if they have a computer and the time to search. Some times the volunteers have a hard time getting law enforcement to listen to them when they are certain they have a match while others run afoul of the policies and politics of the Doe Network itself. The volunteers come off a little kooky but it seems like their heart is in the right place.

I find it hard to believe that someone can just disappear into thin air in this day and age but it happens all the time. The Doe Network can be an important tool in helping a family to get closure when a loved one goes missing. If you have never been on the site it is quite an experience. You may be surprised to find a mystery in your own backyard. The case histories are tragic and sometimes the rendering of the victims likeness is disturbing, think Rescue Annie rubberized faces. The lucky ones get a forensic artists updated computer rendering while the really luck ones have entire websites devoted to them with memorials in the towns in which they were found. Thanks to the modern day amateur sleuths like the ones in this book who troll the internet more people have a shot at being properly laid to rest. show less

There is, it turns out, an entire subculture of people on the internet obsessed with cold case crimes in which the bodies were never identified, often people who themselves have had family members disappear. They've even had some real successes at solving some of these old cases, which is maybe less surprising when you realize how disorganized law enforcement can be when it comes to coordinating missing persons reports with records of unidentified bodies.

It's a really interesting (if very, show more very gruesome) topic, but, honestly, I found this book disappointing. Halber's prose is vivid enough, but the structure of her writing is terrible, jumping around from topic to topic and presenting events out of order in a way that I found deeply frustrating, making what should have been a fascinating account more annoying than compelling.

Rating: I did learn some interesting things, and I suspect that on a less distracting week I'd have had more patience with it, so I'm going to give it 3/5, but I really do kind of want to rate it lower. show less

The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases by Deborah Halber is a very highly recommended, fascinating anecdotal look at how amateurs are solving cold cases.

Chances are you know of a cold case, an unsolved murder right in your own city. Startlingly, according to what Halber discovered, chances are also "good that you or someone you know has at one point stumbled over a dead body. There are shockingly large numbers of them out there. According to the national show more institute of Justice, America is home to tens of thousands of unidentified human remains, with four thousand more turning up every year: intrepid adventurers or athletes who left their IDs at home; victims of accidents and mass disasters; suicides; undocumented immigrants; the homeless; runaway teenagers; victims of serial killers; and those who cast off a former identity, changed names, and left no forwarding address." Location 159

These cases are often given "mournful monikers" from the communities in which their bodies were found and become known as the "Tent Girl, Somerton man, Princess Doe, Saltair Sally, the Boy in the Box, the Belle in the Well, the Lady Who Danced Herself to Death." I can think of several unsolved cases where I currently live and know of others from various other communities I've lived in over the years. The number of unsolved cases is shocking. It is easy to see why law enforcement officials don't prioritize these unsolved cases when there are so many other crimes that can be solved.

While amateur detectives did try to solve some of these cases over the years, often searching for a missing relative, the age of the internet has dramatically changed their success rate. Now these same amateurs have access to much more information and they often have the time and desire to solve these cold cases. It becomes a rather macabre hobby where members have created online communities based on providing information on the cold cases and virtually compete with each other to try to solve them.

"By 2001, the same unidentified corpses that were once almost universally ignored had evolved into tantalizing clues in a massive, global version of Concentration played around the clock by a hodgepodge of self-styled amateur sleuths, a dedicated skeleton crew that shared a desire to match faces to names—and names to dead bodies. Anybody with an idealistic bent, a lot of time, and a strong stomach could sign on: a stay-at-home mom in New York, a chain store cashier in Mississippi, a nurse in Nebraska, a retired cop and his exotic-dancer girlfriend in Houston." Location 376

Halber actually looks at some of these cold cases and the legends that have sprung up around them. Intertwined in the stories about the cold cases is information about the amateurs who are spending vast amounts of personal time trying to solve them. As these online communities share tips and information on discussion boards like Cold Cases and the Doe Network, they can also get overly competitive and combative with each other. Even so, many law enforcement officials are benefiting from their skills at solving these very cold cases.

Halber writes in a very conversational, anecdotal, personal style that, after glancing at other reviews, I'm guessing you either like or don't like. I happened to enjoy The Skeleton Crew a lot and part of that enjoyment was in Halber's treatment of the topic. I found The Skeleton Crew highly entertaining. She's a great writer and, much like the cold cases she's discussing and her amateurs are trying to solve, sometimes the trail to the solution takes a few meanders before you find the identity of the deceased.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Simon & Schuster for review purposes.

Contents:
Prologue: The Well Driller
The Ultimate Identity Crisis
You Can Disappear Here
It’s the Ethernet, my Dear Watson
Ghost Girls
Bring out Your Dead
Inside Reefer
The Perks of Being Ornery
Seekers of Lost Souls
How to make a John Doe
Finding Bobbie Ann
Quackie is Dead
The Head in the Bucket
The Hippie and the Lawman
The oldest Unsolved Case in Massachusetts
Relief, Sadness, Success
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Endnotes show less