Re: More on Chicago-area Boy's Body

>From the Chicago Tribune--

Many profiles, but no ID
Dead boy in DuPage gets national attention

By James Kimberly and Angela Rozas, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune
staff reporter John Biemer contributed to this report
Published October 12, 2005

In a suburban Washington, D.C., office, Jerry Nance pores over the
case files of missing 3-year-old boys from around the country, hoping
one holds the identity of the child whose body was dumped in a field
near Naperville.

As a senior case manager for the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, Nance is working with DuPage County sheriff's
police investigators. Since Saturday, he and an assistant have read
files of 714 boys of that age culled from the center's database. The
task is difficult, but not without hope, Nance says.

"I can pretty much safely say, if the child has been reported missing,
he will be identified," Nance said.

But there is no guarantee that this child, whose body was found
Saturday in a laundry bag near the rural intersection of Ferry and
Meadow Roads, was ever reported missing. Local authorities are
convinced the boy is not one of the 12 missing 3-year-olds in the
database of missing children maintained by the Illinois State Police,
Nance said.

So Nance has broadened the field to include every missing 3-year-old
boy in the country. He compares heights, weights, eye colors and hair
colors, hoping to find one that could provide DuPage County
investigators with a solid lead.

If none of the cases holds the answer, Nance will turn to a database
of missing children kept by the FBI. If that does not produce a match,
he will broaden the field to include all boys between the ages of 2
and 5, he said.

It would help if the boy had suffered a broken bone or a chipped
tooth, something that would distinguish him from the others in the
database. Nance won't know that until he receives a copy of the
autopsy report, he said.

The boy's age has made the case a priority for the center, he said.

"We're moving this one to the top of the list. It is really rare to
find a 3-year-old like this," he said.

DuPage County authorities continue to do all they can to identify the
boy, pursuing every strategy, no matter how remote its chances at
success. Police have called in a sketch artist. A forensic
entomologist will help the DuPage County coroner's office determine
how long the body lay in the field.

Coroner Pete Siekmann said investigators are open to trying to match
the boy's footprints with those of newborns in hospitals, if they can
narrow down where he was born.

State's Atty. Joseph Birkett said the case is taking a toll on
investigators.

"The worst part of our jobs as prosecutors and law enforcement is
dealing with cases involving children," he said. "The worst cases are
homicides with children. The murder of a child is the worst thing to
have to confront, to have to deal with."

The first priority, Birkett said, is to find out who he is.

"There are all kinds of possibilities, but the starting point of this
investigation is trying to identify this child," he said.

The boy was roughly 38 1/2 inches tall and weighed between 25 and 30
pounds. He wore a navy blue shirt with three buttons and no collar and
navy blue pants. The brand name of the clothing is Faded Glory, which
is commonly sold in Wal-Mart stores. The size was 2T.

Nance said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is
asked to help law enforcement identify a child's body about 115 times
a year. Usually, the body is that of a teen.

"When you're talking about child deaths and child homicides, those
[younger victims] are really quite rare," Nance said. "It's every
parent's worst nightmare. It's the type of crime if it happens once,
that's one too many."

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Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0510120176oct12,1,2445248.story?coll=chi-news-hed

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