T H E BOSTON G LOB E • SATU RDAY • F E B RUARY 2 3 , 2 0 1 3

LIVING

WEB SLEUTHSSHARING INFORMATION ONLINE,AMATEURS SIFTTHROUGH DATA IN ANATTEMPTTO HELP POLICE REUNITEUNIDENTIFIED BODIESWITH NAMES

BYDEBORAH HALBER | PAGE 12

FROM THE ARCHIVES SLEDDING ON BOSTON COMMON, 1930 PAGE 3

THEATER LYRIC GETS TO HEART OF ‘STONES IN HIS POCKETS’ PAGE 4

THEATER ‘VISION DISTURBANCE’ LANDS AT TNT FESTIVAL PAGE 5

TELEVISION

CHATTING ABOUT‘SOUTHIE RULES,’‘RIPPER STREET’PAGE 7

BRING THE FAMILY

TOO COLD OUT?TAKE THE KIDSTO A WATER PARK.PAGE 11

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PRINTED COPY FOR PERSONAL READING ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION.

For mental health counselor Sheree Greenwood, the key to the case was a dis-tinctive T-shirt; Bobby Lingoes homed in on some tattooed initials; and Tonya Fin-sterwald fixated on the unidentified body in New Jersey wearing swimming trunks and a missing Pennsylvania man who loved water sports.

All three of these amateur sleuths used freely available Internet resources to help re-unite the unidentified dead with their names.

Such cases are mysterious and vexing, especially in an era when identities are so inescapably public. Over the past decade, the Internet helped create a growing army of volunteers who, with nothing more than a computer and the uniquely human ability to spot similarities buried in mountains of data, are helping bring closure to families

and spurring law enforcement to reopen the most frigid of cold cases.

These amateur sleuths share information gleaned from newspapers and other public sources on websites created for just that purpose, and they connect with one another, but not necessarily face-to-face. Participants across the country range from Web-surfing college students to professionals like Dan Brady, a software sales rep from Holliston, to stay-at-home moms who are true-crime fiends. “You meet other people, and develop relationships with some you’ll never meet in person,” Greenwood said. Brady said he reg-ularly corresponds with a dozen Web sleuths he wouldn’t recognize on the street.

There are plenty of cases to investigate in Massachusetts. Many have heard of the Lady of the Dunes, the nameless young wom-

an who was found with her hands cut off and her head bashed in on a Provincetown beach in 1974. There are at least 20 other local Jane and John Does: the disembodied cranium of a young woman found 6 miles off the coast of Marshfield in 1976; a 20- or 30-year-old man with two bullet wounds to the head and a distinctive metal medallion around his neck, found in a wooded section of Burlington in 1975; a middle-age Hispanic woman, wearing a red-and-yellow hoodie, prescription eyeglasses, and silver jewelry, found near Tolland State Forest in 1995; and a man with a tattoo of a broken heart and a copy of the Bible, whose body was floating face down in the Charles River in Waltham last August.

Circumstances unexpectedly thrust Greenwood into the world of the missing. In June 2000, when 16-year-old Molly Anne Bish vanished from a lifeguard post at a pond in sleepy Warren, Greenwood, moth-er of one of Bish’s classmates, logged onto the nascent Internet to spread word of the search. Greenwood stumbled upon the Doe Network, a website populated with photos of the missing as well as dozens of images of clay busts and other artist reconstructions of unidentified human remains: a kind of Facebook of the dead.

Brady made his way to the Doe Network when he spied an item in the Globe about a perplexing 1957 Philadelphia case known as the Boy in the Box, a 4- to 6-year-old mur-der victim dumped in a field in a cardboard box. “It seemed like, ‘Wow, somebody should have claimed that boy,’ ” he said. “It’s a little haunting.”

In 2007, a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) census of coroners, medical exam-iners, and law enforcement agencies esti-mated that there may be as many as 40,000 unidentified individuals — more than a sold-out Fenway Park — stowed in the back rooms of morgues and buried in unmarked graves across the country. The federal agen-cy, a research and development arm of the Justice Department, called the little-known reality “the nation’s silent mass disaster.”

The Doe Network, whose website launched in 1999, and its spin-offs have swelled over the past decade to include hun-dreds, perhaps thousands, of volunteers who post details about the missing and unidenti-fied culled from public records and the me-dia. Some use official medical examiner and coroner websites such as Las Vegas Uniden-tified and the Florida Unidentified Decedent Database to ferret out possible matches, even though it means perusing disturbing post-mortem photos, computer-generated color portraits, cartoon-like illustrations, and distorted clay dummies sporting wigs, like something out of a beautician’s academy for the hopeless.

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Dan Brady, area director and investigator for the Doe Network, a Web-based group of amateur sleuths who try to identify unidentified bodies by checking databases for identifying marks and scouring newspaper accounts of missing persons.

14 G • THE BOSTON GLOBE • FEBRUARY 23 , 2013

paring the proportions of the ears, eyes,or length of the nose. I was able to look atdifferent things and say, ‘This might be apossible match.’ ”

Others become advocates for families,or volunteer to track down DNA samplesand dental records that enable forensicprofessionals to confirm or rule out possi-ble matches.

The notion of ordinary citizens involv-ing themselves in police work has been asore spot with some in law enforcement,but police admit that cases involving re-mains that no one seems to be looking forare at the bottom of the food chain. “Coldcases are a strain on resources for a lawenforcement agency,” said retired policeinspector James Jabbour, director of fo-rensic science programs at Mount Ida Col-lege in Newton. “Do I support civilianslooking into cold cases? I would say, ‘Whynot?’ as long as it helps solve the case anddoesn’t interfere with the investigation.”

Greenwood, besides orchestrating away in 2001 for her husband and otherham radio operators around the countryto broadcast Amber Alerts for Bish andother missing children, was involved in aspectacularly unlikely solve. She workedwith a handful of Doe Network volun-teers, including Bobby Lingoes, a civiliandispatcher with the Quincy Police Depart-ment, on the case of a Baltimore womanwhose body was found in 2000.

The Doe Network had posted a pictureof the victim’s red T-shirt, adorned with aNative American-style graphic, the date ofa family reunion, and a list of names.Greenwood, who for a time ran a T-shirtscreen-printing and embroidery shop inWarren, said, “I immediately recognizedthat only a small group of people wouldhave access to this T-shirt.

“I showed it to my mom, who is fromOklahoma and has Native Americanblood, and I said, ‘How can we figure outwho this family is?’ ” With the help of aprivate eye and a search of Ancestry.com,

they tracked down family members at-tending the reunion and the person whodesigned the T-shirt. Acting on a tip thatone of the reunion attendees had given ashirt to a Baltimore woman, police fromthat city in 2002 positively identified mur-der victim Brenda Wright, whose familyhad reported her missing and never knewwhat had happened to her. Her case is stillunder investigation.

Lingoes also helped solve a 2002 caseof an unidentified body found in the Sud-bury River. The letters “PK” were tattooedon the man’s right shoulder. Lingoes post-ed the details on the Doe Network, wherea volunteer recalled a missing Texas manwith such a tattoo. Lingoes passed alongthe tip to Framingham police, who deter-mined the body was that of 40-year-oldPeter Kokinakis, who had disappearedfrom Houston earlier that year.

Joseph Formica Jr., a 24-year-old suf-fering from mental illness, left his family’shome in Pennsylvania on Aug. 24, 1980,carrying a knapsack and a bottle of Coke.His family never saw him again. A weeklater, an unidentified body was foundalong the shore of the Delaware River inNew Jersey.

Twenty-eight years later, in 2008,Tonya Finsterwald, a Doe Network volun-teer in Texas perusing the online databasespotted the fact that the body was clad inswimming trunks. Because Formica’smissing-person report noted his love ofwater sports, and his age and date of dis-appearance lined up, she submitted a po-tential match. Late last year, a New Jerseymedical examiner positively identifiedFormica based on fingerprints on file inPennsylvania.

July 2012 marked the 38th anniversa-ry of Massachusetts’s coldest case: the La-dy of the Dunes. Amateur detectives in ano n l i n e c r i m e f o r u m c a l l e d We b -sleuths.com with screen names such as“polywog” and “dreamweaver” continueto speculate about her identity: a young

Florida woman who disappeared in 1974?A 24-year-old who went missing from Bir-mingham, England, that year? “This is afascinating case,” wrote “Upallnite.” “Evil,but fascinating.”

In 2012, the Provincetown police re-ported a lead: James “Whitey” Bulger.Bulger, 83, once considered Boston’s mostnotorious criminal, had allegedly beenseen in Provincetown in the 1970s with awoman who resembled the Lady of theDunes, WCVB-TV reported last year.

Despite the emergence of the NationalMissing and Unidentified Persons System(NamUs), an NIJ database inspired inpart by the Doe Network and launched in2007, the Doe Network boasts 600 mem-bers worldwide and claims its volunteershave identified or aided with more than66 matches in 11 years.

In early 2013, Brady took over as Mas-sachusetts area director for the Doe Net-work, which makes him the go-to personfor law enforcement. “In general, the cul-ture here is less receptive,” he said. “Lawenforcement is made up of very profes-sional people here who take pride in whatthey do. They don’t really understand ourrole.” Doe volunteers try to chip away atthat attitude by building trust and credi-bility. Many, like Brady, stick with it foryears. Others burn out after a time — bothGreenwood and Lingoes have “retired”from Web sleuthing.

“This is not in any way a profession forany of us,” said Brady, who estimated hespends around four hours a week on a PClaptop in his spare room. “This is a hobby.We all have families and jobs.” It’s not nec-essarily the kind of hobby you bring upover lunch, especially when you’ve beenperusing morgue photos, as Brady some-times does, to help confirm or rule out apotential match. “I used to kind of hide it,to be honest,” Brady said. “I was a littlemore circumspect because people wouldsay, ‘That’s creepy.’ It spooked some peo-ple up.”

Tragically, Greenwood and others werenot able to help Bish, whose remains werediscovered not far from her home in 2003.Almost 13 years later, Greenwood stillshudders to think about Bish’s abductionand murder. She has returned to her men-tal-health practice full-time but said “a lotof really good things” resulted from hertime with the Doe Network, including be-ing tapped by NamUs for civilian trainingin using the official database. “I’m a do-gooder, and I feel like I’ve contributed,”she said.

She suggested that anyone with astrong stomach might enjoy the work. “Itgives you something to do with your timeand gives your life meaning,” she said. “Ifyou can tolerate it, you can look at thesedifferent stories, and you can make a dif-ference.”

Deborah Halber is a freelance writer andauthor of “The Skeleton Crew,’’ a bookabout the Web sleuth phenomenon com-ing from Simon & Schuster in 2014. Shecan be reached at halber.deborah@gmail.com.

There are plenty of cases to investigatein Massachusetts. Many have heard of theLady of the Dunes, the nameless youngwoman who was found with her handscut off and her head bashed in on a Prov-incetown beach in 1974. There are at least20 other local Jane and John Does: thedisembodied cranium of a young womanfound 6 miles off the coast of Marshfieldin 1976; a 20- or 30-year-old man withtwo bullet wounds to the head and a dis-tinctive metal medallion around his neck,found in a wooded section of Burlingtonin 1975; a middle-age Hispanic woman,wearing a red-and-yellow hoodie, pre-scription eyeglasses, and silver jewelry,found near Tolland State Forest in 1995;and a man with a tattoo of a broken heartand a copy of the Bible, whose body wasfloating face down in the Charles River inWaltham last August.

Circumstances unexpectedly thrustGreenwood into the world of the missing.In June 2000, when 16-year-old MollyAnne Bish vanished from a lifeguard postat a pond in sleepy Warren, Greenwood,mother of one of Bish’s classmates, loggedonto the nascent Internet to spread wordof the search. Greenwood stumbled uponthe Doe Network, a website populatedwith photos of the missing as well as doz-ens of images of clay busts and other art-ist reconstructions of unidentified humanremains: a kind of Facebook of the dead.

Brady made his way to the Doe Net-work when he spied an item in the Globeabout a perplexing 1957 Philadelphiacase known as the Boy in the Box, a 4- to6-year-old murder victim dumped in afield in a cardboard box. “It seemed like,‘Wow, somebody should have claimedthat boy,’ ” he said. “It’s a little haunting.”

In 2007, a National Institute of Justice(NIJ) census of coroners, medical examin-ers, and law enforcement agencies esti-mated that there may be as many as40,000 unidentified individuals — morethan a sold-out Fenway Park — stowed inthe back rooms of morgues and buried inunmarked graves across the country. Thefederal agency, a research and develop-ment arm of the Justice Department,called the little-known reality “the na-tion’s silent mass disaster.”

The Doe Network, whose websitelaunched in 1999, and its spin-offs haveswelled over the past decade to includehundreds, perhaps thousands, of volun-teers who post details about the missingand unidentified culled from public re-cords and the media. Some use officialmedical examiner and coroner websitessuch as Las Vegas Unidentified and theFlorida Unidentified Decedent Databaseto ferret out possible matches, eventhough it means perusing disturbingpost-mortem photos, computer-generat-ed color portraits, cartoon-like illustra-tions, and distorted clay dummies sport-ing wigs, like something out of a beauti-cian’s academy for the hopeless.

Greenwood, who once painted por-traits, found she had a knack for “lookingat reconstructions and photos and com-

Continued from preceding page

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

“I was able to look at different things and say, ‘This might be a possiblematch,’ ” says Sheree Greenwood of her online sleuthing skills.

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FOR MENTAL HEALTH counselor Sheree Greenwood, the key to thecase was a distinctive T-shirt; Bobby Lingoes homed in on some tattooedinitials; and Tonya Finsterwald fixated on the unidentified body in NewJersey wearing swimming trunks and a missing Pennsylvania man wholoved water sports.

All three of these amateur sleuths used freely available Internet re-sources to help reunite the unidentified dead with their names.

Such cases are mysterious and vexing, especially in an era when identi-ties are so inescapably public. Over the past decade, the Internet helpedcreate a growing army of volunteers who, with nothing more than a com-puter and the uniquely human ability to spot similarities buried in moun-tains of data, are helping bring closure to families and spurring law en-forcement to reopen the most frigid of cold cases.

These amateur sleuths share information gleaned from newspapersand other public sources on websites created for just that purpose, andthey connect with one another, but not necessarily face-to-face. Partici-pants across the country range from Web-surfing college students to pro-fessionals like Dan Brady, a software sales rep from Holliston, to stay-at-home moms who are true-crime fiends. “You meet other people, and de-velop relationships with some you’ll never meet in person,” Greenwoodsaid. Brady said he regularly corresponds with a dozen Web sleuths hewouldn’t recognize on the street.

Continued on next page

Dan Brady, area director and investigator for the Doe Network, a Web-based group ofamateur sleuths who try to identify unidentified bodies by checking databases for

identifying marks and scouring newspaper accounts of missing persons.ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

BY DEBORAH HALBERGLOBE CORRESPONDENT

cover story

NAMING THE DEADGrowing numbers of amateurWeb sleuths sift throughdata and share information online in an attemptto help police identify the unidentified

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12 G • THE BOSTON GLOBE • FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 • THE BOSTON GLOBE • G 13

FOR MENTAL HEALTH counselor Sheree Greenwood, the key to thecase was a distinctive T-shirt; Bobby Lingoes homed in on some tattooedinitials; and Tonya Finsterwald fixated on the unidentified body in NewJersey wearing swimming trunks and a missing Pennsylvania man wholoved water sports.

All three of these amateur sleuths used freely available Internet re-sources to help reunite the unidentified dead with their names.

Such cases are mysterious and vexing, especially in an era when identi-ties are so inescapably public. Over the past decade, the Internet helpedcreate a growing army of volunteers who, with nothing more than a com-puter and the uniquely human ability to spot similarities buried in moun-tains of data, are helping bring closure to families and spurring law en-forcement to reopen the most frigid of cold cases.

These amateur sleuths share information gleaned from newspapersand other public sources on websites created for just that purpose, andthey connect with one another, but not necessarily face-to-face. Partici-pants across the country range from Web-surfing college students to pro-fessionals like Dan Brady, a software sales rep from Holliston, to stay-at-home moms who are true-crime fiends. “You meet other people, and de-velop relationships with some you’ll never meet in person,” Greenwoodsaid. Brady said he regularly corresponds with a dozen Web sleuths hewouldn’t recognize on the street.

Continued on next page

Dan Brady, area director and investigator for the Doe Network, a Web-based group ofamateur sleuths who try to identify unidentified bodies by checking databases for

identifying marks and scouring newspaper accounts of missing persons.ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

BY DEBORAH HALBERGLOBE CORRESPONDENT

cover story

NAMING THE DEADGrowing numbers of amateurWeb sleuths sift throughdata and share information online in an attemptto help police identify the unidentified

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12 G • THE BOSTON GLOBE • FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 • THE BOSTON GLOBE • G 13

FOR MENTAL HEALTH counselor Sheree Greenwood, the key to thecase was a distinctive T-shirt; Bobby Lingoes homed in on some tattooedinitials; and Tonya Finsterwald fixated on the unidentified body in NewJersey wearing swimming trunks and a missing Pennsylvania man wholoved water sports.

All three of these amateur sleuths used freely available Internet re-sources to help reunite the unidentified dead with their names.

Such cases are mysterious and vexing, especially in an era when identi-ties are so inescapably public. Over the past decade, the Internet helpedcreate a growing army of volunteers who, with nothing more than a com-puter and the uniquely human ability to spot similarities buried in moun-tains of data, are helping bring closure to families and spurring law en-forcement to reopen the most frigid of cold cases.

These amateur sleuths share information gleaned from newspapersand other public sources on websites created for just that purpose, andthey connect with one another, but not necessarily face-to-face. Partici-pants across the country range from Web-surfing college students to pro-fessionals like Dan Brady, a software sales rep from Holliston, to stay-at-home moms who are true-crime fiends. “You meet other people, and de-velop relationships with some you’ll never meet in person,” Greenwoodsaid. Brady said he regularly corresponds with a dozen Web sleuths hewouldn’t recognize on the street.

Continued on next page

Dan Brady, area director and investigator for the Doe Network, a Web-based group ofamateur sleuths who try to identify unidentified bodies by checking databases for

identifying marks and scouring newspaper accounts of missing persons.ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

BY DEBORAH HALBERGLOBE CORRESPONDENT

cover story

NAMING THE DEADGrowing numbers of amateurWeb sleuths sift throughdata and share information online in an attemptto help police identify the unidentified

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12 G • THE BOSTON GLOBE • FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 FEBRUARY 23 , 2013 • THE BOSTON GLOBE • G 13

FOR MENTAL HEALTH counselor Sheree Greenwood, the key to thecase was a distinctive T-shirt; Bobby Lingoes homed in on some tattooedinitials; and Tonya Finsterwald fixated on the unidentified body in NewJersey wearing swimming trunks and a missing Pennsylvania man wholoved water sports.

All three of these amateur sleuths used freely available Internet re-sources to help reunite the unidentified dead with their names.

Such cases are mysterious and vexing, especially in an era when identi-ties are so inescapably public. Over the past decade, the Internet helpedcreate a growing army of volunteers who, with nothing more than a com-puter and the uniquely human ability to spot similarities buried in moun-tains of data, are helping bring closure to families and spurring law en-forcement to reopen the most frigid of cold cases.

These amateur sleuths share information gleaned from newspapersand other public sources on websites created for just that purpose, andthey connect with one another, but not necessarily face-to-face. Partici-pants across the country range from Web-surfing college students to pro-fessionals like Dan Brady, a software sales rep from Holliston, to stay-at-home moms who are true-crime fiends. “You meet other people, and de-velop relationships with some you’ll never meet in person,” Greenwoodsaid. Brady said he regularly corresponds with a dozen Web sleuths hewouldn’t recognize on the street.

Continued on next page

Dan Brady, area director and investigator for the Doe Network, a Web-based group ofamateur sleuths who try to identify unidentified bodies by checking databases for

identifying marks and scouring newspaper accounts of missing persons.ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

BY DEBORAH HALBERGLOBE CORRESPONDENT

cover story

NAMING THE DEADGrowing numbers of amateurWeb sleuths sift throughdata and share information online in an attemptto help police identify the unidentified

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PRINTED COPY FOR PERSONAL READING ONLY. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION.

Greenwood, who once painted portraits, found she had a knack for “looking at reconstructions and photos and comparing the proportions of the ears, eyes, or length of the nose. I was able to look at different things and say, ‘This might be a possible match.’ ”

Others become advocates for families, or volunteer to track down DNA samples and dental records that enable forensic pro-fessionals to confirm or rule out possible matches.

The notion of ordinary citizens involving themselves in police work has been a sore spot with some in law enforcement, but police admit that cases involving remains that no one seems to be looking for are at the bottom of the food chain. “Cold cases are a strain on resources for a law enforcement agency,” said retired police inspector James Jabbour, director of forensic science programs at Mount Ida Col-lege in Newton. “Do I support civilians look-ing into cold cases? I would say, ‘Why not?’ as long as it helps solve the case and doesn’t interfere with the investigation.”

Greenwood, besides orchestrating a way in 2001 for her husband and other ham ra-dio operators around the country to broad-cast Amber Alerts for Bish and other miss-ing children, was involved in a spectacularly unlikely solve. She worked with a handful of Doe Network volunteers, including Bob-by Lingoes, a civilian dispatcher with the Quincy Police Department, on the case of a Baltimore woman whose body was found in 2000.

The Doe Network had posted a picture of the victim’s red T-shirt, adorned with a Native American-style graphic, the date of a family reunion, and a list of names. Green-wood, who for a time ran a T-shirt screen-printing and embroidery shop in Warren, said, “I immediately recognized that only a small group of people would have access to this T-shirt.

“I showed it to my mom, who is from Oklahoma and has Native American blood, and I said, ‘How can we figure out who this family is?’ ” With the help of a private eye and a search of Ancestry.com, they tracked down family members attending the re-union and the person who designed the T-shirt. Acting on a tip that one of the re-union attendees had given a shirt to a Balti-more woman, police from that city in 2002 positively identified murder victim Brenda Wright, whose family had reported her miss-ing and never knew what had happened to her. Her case is still under investigation.

Lingoes also helped solve a 2002 case

of an unidentified body found in the Sud-bury River. The letters “PK” were tattooed on the man’s right shoulder. Lingoes posted the details on the Doe Network, where a vol-unteer recalled a missing Texas man with such a tattoo. Lingoes passed along the tip to Framingham police, who determined the body was that of 40-year-old Peter Kokina-kis, who had disappeared from Houston ear-lier that year.

Joseph Formica Jr., a 24-year-old suf-fering from mental illness, left his family’s home in Pennsylvania on Aug. 24, 1980, car-rying a knapsack and a bottle of Coke. His family never saw him again. A week later, an unidentified body was found along the shore of the Delaware River in New Jersey.

Twenty-eight years later, in 2008, Tonya Finsterwald, a Doe Network volunteer in Texas perusing the online database spotted the fact that the body was clad in swimming trunks. Because Formica’s missing-person report noted his love of water sports, and his age and date of disappearance lined up, she submitted a potential match. Late last year, a New Jersey medical examiner positively identified Formica based on fingerprints on file in Pennsylvania.

July 2012 marked the 38th anniversary of Massachusetts’s coldest case: the Lady of the Dunes. Amateur detectives in an on-line crime forum called Websleuths.com with screen names such as “polywog” and “dreamweaver” continue to speculate about her identity: a young Florida woman who disappeared in 1974? A 24-year-old who went missing from Birmingham, England, that year? “This is a fascinating case,” wrote “Upallnite.” “Evil, but fascinating.”

In 2012, the Provincetown police report-ed a lead: James “Whitey” Bulger. Bulger, 83, once considered Boston’s most notorious criminal, had allegedly been seen in Prov-incetown in the 1970s with a woman who

resembled the Lady of the Dunes, WCVB-TV reported last year.

Despite the emergence of the National Missing and Unidenti-fied Persons System (NamUs), an NIJ database inspired in part by the Doe Network and launched in 2007, the Doe Network boasts 600 members worldwide and claims its volunteers have identi-fied or aided with more than 66 matches in 11 years.

In early 2013, Brady took over as Massachusetts area direc-tor for the Doe Network, which makes him the go-to person for law enforcement. “In general, the culture here is less receptive,” he said. “Law enforcement is made up of very professional people

here who take pride in what they do. They don’t really understand our role.” Doe vol-unteers try to chip away at that attitude by building trust and credibility. Many, like Brady, stick with it for years. Others burn out after a time — both Greenwood and Lin-goes have “retired” from Web sleuthing.

“This is not in any way a profession for any of us,” said Brady, who estimated he spends around four hours a week on a PC laptop in his spare room. “This is a hobby. We all have families and jobs.” It’s not neces-sarily the kind of hobby you bring up over lunch, especially when you’ve been perusing morgue photos, as Brady sometimes does, to help confirm or rule out a potential match. “I used to kind of hide it, to be honest,” Brady said. “I was a little more circumspect because people would say, ‘That’s creepy.’ It spooked some people up.”

Tragically, Greenwood and others were not able to help Bish, whose remains were discovered not far from her home in 2003. Almost 13 years later, Greenwood still shud-ders to think about Bish’s abduction and murder. She has returned to her mental-health practice full-time but said “a lot of really good things” resulted from her time with the Doe Network, including being tapped by NamUs for civilian training in us-ing the official database. “I’m a do-gooder, and I feel like I’ve contributed,” she said.

She suggested that anyone with a strong stomach might enjoy the work. “It gives you something to do with your time and gives your life meaning,” she said. “If you can tol-erate it, you can look at these different sto-ries, and you can make a difference.” n

Deborah Halber is a freelance writer and au-thor of “The Skeleton Crew,’’ a book about the Web sleuth phenomenon coming from Simon & Schuster in 2014. She can be reached at halber.deborah@gmail.com.

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

“I was able to look at different things and say, ‘This might be a possiblematch,’ ” says Sheree Greenwood of her online sleuthing skills.

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