The initials JPF on the ring would have been enough to produce major leads if James P. Freund was in NamUs, something I mentioned already. I will also point out that the following search term for newspapers.com "J????" and "P." and "F?????" and "presumed decedent" produced about 8000 hits. The question marks represent unknown search characters.
So "J????" as a search term covers "James" and "F?????" as a search term covers Freund. Including "presumed decedent" hits onto legal notices because that's a common phrase used in them (although there are many other similar search terms that may do that).
8000 hits is plenty to sift through but the legal notice for James P. Freund's death in absentia was in there. It takes at least seven years or something like that to be declared dead in absentia, I think, so maybe some of the hits could be winnowed out by identifying a target range.
The point is, we had the missing person's initials all along. If you ever come across a case where you only have initials again then the initials can be used in newspaper databases by using the question marks. It might seem tenuous but I don't think it is: it would just take patience and organization.
You would have to cover a target range of years and work with names of different lengths and that would make it hard. Honestly, I think using the question marks, studying terms that are included in legal notices involved dead-in-absentia topics, and a whole lot of organization and patience could have hit on James P. Freund's legal death notice with about 40 hours of work.
I wish I had that brainwave back in 2007 when I first read about this case. One hour a week and maybe it would have taken a year to find the lead. With a streamlined process then maybe it could take less time. Hope that makes sense.
