January 22, 2015 — Decades passed and family members largely moved on with their lives. But a relatively new federal database, known as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, holds out promise for many families hoping to finally know the fate of loved ones gone missing, including the hundreds annually across the country who drown at sea and whose bodies may have been found, but never identified.
In 1990, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 4,407 people nationwide.
On March 25, 1990, however, William Hokanson Sr. and his 19-year-old son William Hokanson Jr. went down off Martha’s Vineyard with the elder Hokanson’s commercial fishing vessel Sol E Mar and were never seen again.
“All the Coast Guard report I have says is ‘Presumed dead. Lost at sea,’ ” said Ellen Oullette, the elder Hokanson’s ex-wife and Hokanson the younger’s mother.
Decades passed and family members largely moved on with their lives. But a relatively new federal database, known as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, holds out promise for many families hoping to finally know the fate of loved ones gone missing, including the hundreds annually across the country who drown at sea and whose bodies may have been found, but never identified.
NamUs began with a 2003 National Institute of Justice decision to fund the increased use of DNA technology in the criminal justice system. With over 40,000 unidentified bodies or body parts in medical examiner and coroners offices nationally, a task force recommended creating an interactive database that allows the public access to what had been the domain of law enforcement.