Mon, March 24, 2008

Cyber sleuths casting wide netAmateur finds missing person
By BRIAN GRAY, SUN MEDIA

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Help is only a web-posting away.

As police services across North America accept the Internet and the millions of people who surf the web as possible links to unsolved mysteries, finding someone who has gone missing or putting a name to an unidentified body is now more likely than ever.

In fact, there are people who have made it a hobby to go through missing persons and unidentified remains websites, like the Ontario Provincial Police's Resolve Initiative, in an attempt to do what law-enforcement has been unable to do - make a match and solve a mystery.

Jordan, a 28-year-old Toronto resident, who didn't want his last name used, is not a cop or a private investigator; he's just a guy with a regular job and an unusual hobby that is becoming more popular by the day -- websleuthing.

"I just find it hard to believe these people are out there and nobody misses them anywhere," Jordan said recently, shortly after his most successful cyber investigation to date. "Even if you're the meanest person in the world, you still have a friend out there and they can't all be scoundrels or gangsters."


Russell Pensyl was not a scoundrel.

He had a family that loved him and a home to go to, but he also had schizophrenia and sometimes he would just wander off only to return days, weeks or months later.

But after his family last saw him in their Western New York home in the spring of 1993 nobody knew where Russell Pensyl was for the next 15 years.

Few people outside his family even knew his name.

Most knew him as Rusty, some knew he was missing and the OPP knew him solely by his case number after his remains were found in the Rosedale Valley in May 1993.

Red hair, a moustache and a T-shirt that read "Lovely Whistler British Columbia" were the only clues that separated Rusty from the hundreds of other John Does whose remains are almost forgotten in nameless graves, all their known details and worldly possessions kept in dusty file folders in Ontario, across Canada and around North America.

Oh, and there was that missing pinky finger.

That little detail -- amputated in a childhood accident -- marked Rusty as different from most of the others in life and death.

It was the key, said Jordan, to solving the trans-border mystery, putting the minds of Russell Pensyl's family at ease.

"My poor baby," were the first words out of Louise Pensyl when, after 15 years, she finally heard last month that her brother had been located.

"I miss him more now that I know the circumstances of his death," said Louise. "I miss the jokes and his laugh and I even miss the teasing."

OPP Det.-Const. Scott Johnston was the officer who broke the news to Louise and he acknowledged tips like this one from the public are invaluable.

"We're working with a numbers game," Johnston said. "The more people out there looking, the more people that take an interest, the more people we have out there searching, it's an extension of what law-enforcement agencies are doing."

For a decade and a half Louise and the entire Pensyl family wondered where her brother was and no one had any answers.

The emotional problem and mental illness had them thinking Russel was locked up somewhere or living with someone else. They never dreamed he had made his way to Toronto, she said.

He had taken off before but when he had been gone a year, Louise filed a missing persons report and started to ask everyone who knew him if they had any idea of his whereabouts.

Some tried to help, others took money to provide paperwork the Pensyls could have dug up themselves. None of it put them closer to finding Russel

Enter Jordan, who was skimming through the I Care Missing Persons website a few weeks ago when he came across a posting by Louise's niece.

The post read: "Missing brother, Lockport, N.Y., Russell Pensyl, red hair, has pinky finger missing," Jordan recalled.

"So I thought to myself, ePinky finger missing, where have I heard that before?'"

Jordan went back to the OPP site and found the case of the man found near a footbridge at Rosedale Valley Rd. in May 1993.

Back and forth they went, Jordan said, piecing together information until he was sure they had a match.

At one point the Pensyls became suspicious, wondering if Jordan's motives were those of a Good Samaritan or a huckster with ransom on his mind.

"If you post a loved one online as missing, chances are you're going to get a handful of people threatening you saying they know where he is and pay me this amount of money or you'll never see him," Jordan said. "Are you going to take a chance they're bluffing or are you going to follow up on it?"

The Internet has opened a whole new world to police services, Johnston said. The OPP's Resolve Initiative is a direct effort to enlist the public's help and spark someone's memory.

"We have to think broader, we have to think bigger," he said. "By having the public picking and choosing and working on cases for us, it's just another tool for us."

Jordan would like to see a single organized database for all missing and unidentified people.

"You have a centralized marketplace for used underwear on the Internet in the form of EBay," he said. "Why can't you take that technology and have a centralized database that searches itself?"

Until then, Jordan and hundreds like him will keep searching in an effort to provide the much-needed help for those like Louise Pensyl.

"Anyone could go missing," Jordan said. "It could be your brother, your father, your wife -- it happens every day."

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WEB WATCH

Websleuthing is for anyone with access to the Internet, a sense of curiosity and a desire to help.

The following sites are recommended starting points and all of them change periodically so it is important to check back often.

- www.doenetwork.org -- Database of missing persons and unidentified bodies focusing on North America, Europe and Australia.

- www.websleuths.com -- An online meeting place where websleuths can exchange ideas.

- www.nampn.org - North American Missing Persons Network

- http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com - A volunteer site where Louise Pensyl first posted about her brother.

- fluiddb.com/ - A Florida-based project that is an excellent template for others looking to achieve a web presence.

- www.charleyproject.org - The Charley Project profiles over 7,000 "cold case" missing people mainly from the United States and links to over 500 missing person-related websites.

- www.opp.ca/Investigative/UnidentifiedRemains/opp_005661.html - The Deep River case is one the OPP's Det.-Const. Scott Johnston said has enough information to be solved soon.

- http://www.opp.ca/Investigative/MissingPersons/index.htm - The home page for the OPP's Resolve Initiative.
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