Pictures of unidentified dead bodies will be posted online for the first time - allowing the families of missing people to search for their loves ones, it has emerged. The Missing Persons Bureau currently holds records of around 1,000 people who have not been identified, some dating back to the 1950s.
The bureau has now launched a new website which is dedicated to finding the identity of mystery individuals.
It will feature pictures of bodies, but any images deemed to be distressing will be marked with a warning and require confirmation before viewing.
They include a photograph of the arm of one body found collapsed in Islington, north London in 2007, easily recognisable by the distinctive tattoos of panther and red Indian on his right forearm.
Many of the bodies have washed up on beaches, unrecognisable as a result of being exposed to the elements, or have been discovered on railway lines.
Some 250 people die on the UK's railways every year, most as a result of suicide, according to British Transport police, and a significant number of these bodies are never identified.
Trying to find matches for the corpses against the list of the missing is also very time-consuming.
By law, local councils must cremate or bury unidentified corpses, to avoid the risk of disease.
This makes identification far more difficult: cremation destroys DNA, while to exhume a buried body, police must seek the approval of a coroner before any further investigation can be carried out.
The graves are often marked with wooden plaques stating 'unknown male' or 'unknown female'.
The Missing Persons Bureau published a report on the number of missing persons and unidentified bodies in Britain based on figures provided by forces across the country on the number of missing person incidents reported in 2010/11.
The bureau are a total of around 1,000 unidentified cases which remain unidentified.
Just six per cent of those involve living people, most of whom have been found without identification and suffer from a form of memory loss or dementia.
The vast majority of cases - 83 per cent - the bureau is desperate to solve involve dead bodies while there are still more than 100 unidentified body parts (11 per cent) sitting in police morgues across Britain waiting to be identified.
with a small number of body parts (11 per cent) and unidentified alive people (6 per cent) also still awaiting identification.
Joe Apps, from the Bureau, said: 'The aim of the new site is to bring closure to the families and friends of the people featured.
'With new unidentified person cases we rely on modern forensic techniques for identification but on older cases we look to use every tool available and believe that case publicity is the best chance of getting images recognised.
'This will be the first time families of missing people have been able to search through records for themselves and it will empower families to play an active part in the search for their loved ones.'
Members of the public will be able to search the cases and provide information online.
Any relevant details will then be passed to the police or the coroner in charge of the case.
Details of all unidentified cases, including bodies, remains and living people, will be posted on the website - apart from cases where remains are too partial to be of value.
The bureau was unable to give any details of individual cases - other that the ones highlighted here - but a spokesperson said the website had already been significantly slowed due to the amount of traffic it has already received.
The UK Missing Persons Bureau continually work with police forces and the public to try to put a name to these individuals, to enable them to be put at rest and to provide closure for their family and friends.
The Bureau is also running a special project, called Operation Kharon, providing resources to assist police forces to identify their outstanding unidentified people, bodies and body part cases.
Similar websites have been set up in certain states in the U.S, and by police in Belgium and Switzerland.
The Missing Persons Bureau is part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Tuesday 20 November 2012
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