NamUs – The Charley Project Blog

Not on Namus, Part IV

September 8, 2017September 10, 2017Meaghan13 Comments

As per before, an * at the end of a name means their case is in NamUs but without a photo attached.

Also, I added a new photo of Rochelle Denise Battle just now.

Not on Namus, Part III

August 25, 2017August 27, 2017Meaghan3 Comments

An * at the end of a name means their case is in NamUs but without a photo attached.

So this third list leaves over 300 cases for the NamUs folks to add. I think I’ll take a break now, maybe watch a TV show or two, then get back to my own work.

Not On Namus, Part II

August 24, 2017August 25, 2017Meaghan1 Comment

An * at the end of a name means their case is in NamUs but without a photo attached.

Awhile back someone, via this blog, asked me to make a list of MP cases that aren’t yet on NamUs, so she could add them. I can’t remember who asked anymore, or how to get in touch with that person. But I have started the list, and figured I might as well post what I’ve got on here.

What I’m posting now is JUST THE BEGINNING — there are a lot more that can be added. So stay tuned for more.

Yay, NCMEC added an old runaway case!

August 1, 2017August 2, 2017Meaghan7 Comments

NamUs has the case of Tebble Anita Garrett, with a reasonable amount of detail — tattoo description, several aliases, was pregnant — but there was (and is, as of this writing) no photo on the casefile. In January I was able to get a photo of her from Newspapers.com and so I added her to Charley, but the photo was a few years out of date — Tebble, it seems, had been a chronic runaway, and the photo I had was from an article about one of her disappearances two or three years prior to 1988.

But yay, the NCMEC has just put up a poster for her! With another photo, presumably more recent!

(And the poster, I note, has a different listed date and place of Tebble’s disappearance than NamUs does. Sometimes NamUs gives the date a person was reported missing as the date of disappearance — they’re hardly the only source that does that either. Given Tebble’s status as a chronic runaway, it’s possible her family didn’t report her missing for six weeks because they expected her to return on her own. Or it’s possible they didn’t report her missing at first, then couldn’t quite remember when she was last seen. Or it’s possible she disappeared from Easley, South Carolina on September 7, then was sighted in Pickens, South Carolina on October 18. The cities are only seven to ten miles apart, after all.)

Anyway. I’m so happy they added her. Tebble’s been missing for almost thirty years now and I really LOVE IT when the NCMEC adds new-old cases. It makes my day, actually. Especially new-old cases I haven’t heard of before. Recently they did Henrietta Geck Cruz Avila, and I was able to get some additional info from the Newspapers.com archive (I LOVE THAT ARCHIVE, thanks for paying for the subscription, you-know-who-you-are) about her case. It reminds me a bit of Beverly Sharpman‘s.

Anyway. Thanks, NCMEC.

NamUs question

July 21, 2016August 1, 2017Meaghan3 Comments

I have a question about NamUs that I’ve wondered about for a long time and I wonder if someone who reads this blog can answer for me:

When you search for something on NamUs — say, the first name “Sharon” — and come up with a list of results, and click on one of the cases on the list, it has two numbers at the end of the URL. One, I think, is the actual case number, which never seems to change. Sharon Kay Leinart (missing from Tennessee since 2013), for example, has the number 20176. But after that case number is a / symbol and another number. Like, I just searched for the first name “Sharon” and clicked on Sharon Leinart’s case among the results, and it lists the second number as 22. So her entire URL (as I write this; I’ll get to that in a moment) is https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176/22.

It seems to make no difference what the second number is: if you change that number to 23, or 21, or 1985, the MP you come up with is still Sharon Leinart. And if you remove the second number altogether, it also makes no difference: the URLs https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176 or https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176/ still produce Sharon Leinart and no other person.

The second number also seems to be different every time I search. I have learned to remove the second number when I bookmark NamUs cases for my “to add” folder, because otherwise, https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176/23 and https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176/22 or https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176/anyothernumber come up as separate bookmarks when they all point to the same MP. My bookmark for Sharon Leinart is therefore https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/20176.

My questions

What does that second number mean?
Why does it change every time you perform a search for that person?
Why is there at all, since it’s not necessary for people to see the casefile?

This is not a big deal, it’s just a curiosity of mine. Can anyone familiar with the workings of the NamUs database, or computer databases in general, enlighten me?

NamUs contributions

March 19, 2015August 1, 2017Meaghan2 Comments

NamUs has become such a major resource for missing and unidentified people on the internet, and I use a lot of its information on the Charley Project. I got curious as to just how many cases list NamUs as a source, and did a bit of looking into this. For the record, according to my keyword search, the answer is approximately 2,670. That’s around 28% of the 9,500-odd cases listed on Charley. And to think that back when it first came out I was unimpressed and didn’t think I’d use it. Just goes to show that once in awhile you have to eat your words.

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