The Fernadle Cold Case Group: Giving a Name to the Nameless, Group Hopes to ID Unidentified Remains

Story & Photos By: Jon Szerlag

WITH A DESIRE TO GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY, and the State of Michigan, one local resident has taken her passion for mysteries and puzzles to try to give unidentified remains in Michigan their name back, and possibly bring closure for their family.

Leslie Merritt recently started a group that meets in person to go online and perform research of unidentified remains in Michigan, and try to match them with missing persons in the state. “I want to give peace to families,” said Merritt. “I want them to not have to think every day of their lives if their (family member) is alive and out there.”

Merritt started by going to the web site www.NamUs.gov which lists missing people and information regarding unidentified remains. There are thousands of missing people and unidentified people throughout the United States, and Merritt focuses on only ones that are missing in Michigan, and in the Metro area if possible. She also likes to look at older cases.

The family and friends of those missing are never contacted while poring over the databases and doing other research. But if Merritt believes that she has a good case for a match, she will reach out to the detectives working the case and provide the information to see if they believe it should be followed up or not.

OE OF THE FIRST CASES MERRITT WORKED ON was the remains of an unidentified woman from the late 1980s. She went through all the minute details of the information provided and thought she had a good match. She also reached out to a forum, WebSleuths.com, to have them look over her investigation.

The detective working the case told Merritt that they checked the dental records of the woman she thought was a match, but they were not the same person. But it was going through these cases and having discussions on associated forums that made Merritt want to start a group.

“Whenever I would do a case, I would post on Web Sleuth so other people could take a look at it before I would send it to the police,” said Merritt. “That is why I thought a group would be a good idea, to have a lot of eyes looking at it.”

Merritt asked people on her personal Facebook if anyone would be interested. She did not get a response, so she decided to try Ferndale Forum. The response was much more than she was expecting.

“I was thinking it would only be a few people, but a ton of people were interested,” said Merritt, whose Facebook group has 85 members already. “It is really amazing with all the people who are here and their replies. They were really excited about it.”

NOW THE GROUP MEETS IN PERSON to go over cases and bounce ideas off one another. Merritt also has her own method, which involves a spreadsheet she created to help find similarities between the missing and unidentified persons.

“The whole point is to exclude the missing from the unidentified,” said Merritt. “If there is anything that is big that excludes the person, then you are done and have to go on to the next.”

Which can be hard, when dealing with missing people and after getting personally invested in the case. “It can be hard to give up because it definitely becomes personal,” said Merritt. “When you are really focused on a case, you really get to know the missing or unidentified person. I really felt like I was the voice for that girl (her first case), and I feel like I let her down. And there are no other leads in that case.”

Merritt remembered her first case where she thought she found a match, and how she started to wonder how no one could be looking for this person, or if the missing person was from another state or even Canada.

“I just want to bring peace to people, and I want to be the one who helps do that and solve that mystery,” said Merritt. “There are a ton of people that are identified, and it is hard to make sense of it because there are all of these missing people, as well. There have to be matches.”

The Facebook group is currently called The Ferndale Cold Case Group, and people can visit www.NamUs.gov to view cases of missing and unidentified people.

Nineteen people showed up for the first group meeting in Ferndale to look over a case involving the remains of an African American man found in the Detroit River in Ecorse, Michigan in 2014.