Just read some of the media stories on this - very cool that Carl is being publicly recognized for this!!! This is such a moving story!
Of course Carl is getting recognition; I am working
Cali's FB page, SSA is on Never Forget Me;
both pages have been going nuts asking for interviews.
Here is
the presser on my you tube for anyone that had issues seeing it
Really wish they would have said murdered vs dead
Web sleuthing helped lead to ID of girl found dead in 1979 Gary Craig, Staff writer 5:52 p.m. EST January 27, 2015
Within a split-second after he saw the photo of the smiling young teen her eyes asparkle, her curly blond locks framing a cherubic face Carl Koppelman was certain the girl was "Cali."
From his computer, Koppelman, a member of a volunteer Internet group at Websleuths.com, started a chain of events that led to Monday's announcement: A girl found fatally shot in a Livingston County cornfield in 1979 had finally been identified.
In the fall of last year, a photo of Tammy Jo Alexander was posted on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs. A teenage friend of Alexander, wondering what had happened to her childhood pal, filed a missing persons report that led to the release of the photo on NamUs.
Koppelman, a certified public accountant who lives in El Segundo, California, saw the photograph in September, and quickly recognized it as a near match for the girl found dead in 1979. An autopsy photo had been released in 1979, as well as other reconstruction photos since.
"I said, 'That's her, that's Cali,' " Koppelman, 52, said about the moment he saw Alexander's photograph. "... You're surprised to be seeing somebody you're used to seeing dead, and all of a sudden you see them there with a big smile on their face.
"It's really a shock to see them alive," he said in a telephone interview.
Websleuths.com brings together online volunteer investigators who pore over reports of missing persons and dead bodies that remain unidentified. The website first started in 1999, and now has over 70,000 registered members and 19 moderators, said Tricia Griffith, a Utah woman who co-owns the site with Sue Pruitt....