FORT WORTH -- The eight men died from 1986 to 2009.
At least three are homicide victims. One died in a wreck. Another was accidentally crushed in a trash compactor after apparently falling asleep in a garbage bin.All are believed to be Hispanic, and their identities continue to elude authorities. This week, the Tarrant County medical examiner's office released pictures of their faces and tattoos in hope that someone can identify the men, all buried in pauper's graves."It's just a basic matter of human dignity," said Dr. Roger Metcalf, director of the examiner's Human Identification Laboratory. "We feel like they deserve to have a name on them, if nothing else."As the number of cases fielded by the examiner's office increases each year, so does the number of unidentified bodies received.In 2011, the agency worked 375 unidentified cases, up from 341 the previous year.Although fingerprints, dental comparisons, anthropological examinations and, as a last resort, DNA, ultimately help find the names of almost all the dead, identities of one or two remain a mystery every year.The agency has 60 unidentified cases dating to 1982. Twenty-one are believed to be Hispanic. At least some, authorities suspect, may have been in the country illegally."Other jurisdictions in the nation have much larger problems with unidentified border crossers, but we do believe that some of our unidentified persons are undocumented border crossers," said Dr. Dana Austin, a forensic anthropologist with the agency.Tracking down the identities of illegal immigrants can be challenging, officials said."If a person is in the country illegally, the family may be more reluctant to report them missing to the authorities," Austin said.Metcalf said that many illegal immigrants live alone because their families remain in Mexico, so a sudden disappearance might go unnoticed."A lot of the fellows, if they go missing, all they have here is just friends or people that maybe they don't really know, that they just work with," Metcalf said. "If they go missing, people think maybe they just went back home, and their family doesn't know they're missing."And Metcalf said others may be hesitant to contact officials about the identity of the deceased because of their own legal status."We're not immigration," Metcalf said. "Frankly, we really don't care about their immigration status or if they're illegal. We just want to get [the deceased] identified and get them home."Deanna Boyd, 817-390-7655Twitter: @deannaboydHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
