After remains found, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children helping Smyrna police
"The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has been asked to assist Delaware investigators in identifying
the remains of a child found last week at a softball field in Smyrna.
Often in cases like this, there is no missing child report, said Carol Schweitzer, who supervises NCMEC's forensic services unit.
That's where the forensics come in"
"We do a lot of facilitating," she said, running through a variety of forensic testing that will need to be done to build a profile of the unidentified child found at the Little Lass softball fields last Friday.
First, analysts will have to determine the gender, age and race, said Schweitzer, who oversees cases involving unidentified people who are recovered in the U.S. and believed to be under the age of 21.
In some cases, NCMEC provides a forensic anthropologist to help.
Then, using that basic biometric information, NCMEC can start searching its database for potential matches and help identify the remains using DNA, dental impressions or fingerprints. They usually start locally, then branch out, as they have in the Smyrna case. "