The Chronicle has not responded at all, and it has been two weeks since I sent them the story, so here it is, for those of you who would like to add the local angle (namely, that you are part of the search) and submit it to your own local newspapers.
860 words
SEARCHING FOR ANNA
On Jan. 16, 1973, the only daughter of a San Francisco doctor disappeared from her back yard. Her case, though still open after 36 years, has never yielded a single clue, but today an Internet community of more than 17,000 individuals is aggressively pursuing every possibility.
Anna Christian Waters, who would be 41 this year, was born Sept. 25, 1967, at UC Hospital in San Francisco. Her father was an intern at San Francisco General; her mother had been a writer and editor. The couple had met in Greece and married in New York City, where Waters was attending Columbia Universitys College of Physicians and Surgeons after graduating from Princeton and teaching English in Greece for a year.
The most recent age-advanced picture of Anna produced by Steve Loftin, forensic artist at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, shows a lovely brown-eyed woman with a bright smile. Annas case is considered a probable non-family abduction by the National Center.
Loftin, a retired police officer, has also produced a picture of Anna as a high school senior, to be compared with yearbook pictures. One age progression by Loftin from a photograph of a 47-day-old child resulted in a positive identification after 21 years. Loftin says more than 800 individuals have been positively identified through age- progressed pictures since his unit was founded 18 years ago.
Annas age-advanced pictures were among the first produced by the unit and have been updated periodically, using sophisticated software as well as family pictures for comparison.
Anna has a large presence on the Internet, with a Facebook page, at least two MySpace sites, and several videos including one posted by the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Her official website is
www.searchingforanna.com and is maintained by her uncle, who lives in New Jersey.
Websleuths, the community in which Annas case is featured, is a large group of amateur detectives from many states as well as from Italy, England, Finland, Canada and Greece. One observer compared the group to the Baker Street Irregulars, the informants in Arthur Conan Bryants Sherlock Holmes stories. Tricia Griffith of Park City, Utah, owns and maintains the site.
Websleuths members post under screen names, but the owner and moderators of the site have actual contact information on file if needed.
As of March, 2009, there were 40 different threads or subjects on Annas case alone, with 7895 posts or comments. These comments have been viewed more than 300,000 timessmall potatoes when compared to American Idol, but still a remarkable show of interest in such an old case.
Since there was no Internet at the time Anna disappeared, none of the on-line resources was available, but now interested parties have joined forces to search genealogical data, newspaper stories, maps, photographs, and adoption records. Every discovery of an unidentified body is checked against Annas statistics.
Websleuths ferreted out information leading to a woman living in the mid-West who not only looked startlingly like the age-advanced picture of Anna (a photo overlay was identical), but who had no birth certificate, believed she had been adopted and who had recollections of childhood events parallel to those of Anna, who at the time of her disappearance was living with her mother and half-brothers in San Mateo County.
The evidence was so striking that the San Mateo County sheriffs department collected DNA evidence from Annas family members and from the young woman. Television crews from the east coast were on hand when the results were announced, but there was no match.
Though they have tracked down dozens of Anna look-alikes all over the western world, Websleuths has not been able to find any significant information regarding a person of interest who befriended, influenced, and was apparently supported by Annas father and who claimed to be Annas godfather without portfolio. As far as public records and genealogical sites could tell, this person simply did not exist, though certainly he lived in a Tenderloin Hotel and his death certificate was signed by Waters.
An individual living in San Mateo County claims to have seen Anna in the company of a strange man several years after the disappearance, but Websleuths has not been able to substantiate this story.
At least six adopted girls have been reunited with their birth families through the efforts of Websleuth members. Classmates and teachers of the missing woman have made suggestions. A book, Searching for Anna, has been published and is available through distributors on line.
Gerald Nance, director of Annas case at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says Annas case is far from (our) oldest. I have two cases from the 1940s, a few from the 1950s, and a good bunch from the 60s. I know that after this much time, your question becomes Is she alive?
We have several factors in our corner to suggest that she is: Most children taken under the age of five (and the percentage gets higher as the age gets lower) are taken because the abductor wants or needs a child for family reasons.
.
