Why I look at so many pictures

I was writing up a case today and I discovered NamUs had the wrong information about the MP’s tattoos. This often happens when people are just going off by what they remember the tattoos looked like or said, without using photographs to verify.

Fortunately in this case the MP had a Facebook page with loads of public photos of himself and he liked to post photos where he was wearing practically nothing but his ink and (sometimes) boxer shorts. In fact I think he was doing sex work, or at least used to, unless the screenshots he put up of Backpage ads for his services were a joke. Unfortunately most of the tattoos blended with his dark skin and it was hard to tell from the photos what they were supposed to be.

So far I’ve put the clearest three images I could find on his casefile and hope someone will recognize the tattoos. I’ve got two super clear images where you can clearly tell what the tattoo is, and one faded design that has me scratching my head. There were more tattoos than that but most of them looked like just blurs in the pics.

This kind of thing matters a lot, at least to me, because I know of at least one Charley Project case where the guy was identified because I’d posted a picture of his tattoo (cropped from a photo he’d put on social media) and somebody recognized the tattoo. I don’t want someone to spend unnecessary years on a John Doe list because I was lazy.

It was pointed out to me that, as I’ve had this awful fatigue lately, lasting for like a month now, and as my husband has had the same, that we might have gotten covid. I’m getting tested tomorrow. If I’m positive we’re going to assume he has it too. Wish us luck.

[UPDATE: I found MP’s second Facebook page with much better quality pics! Yay!]