Identification of Sumter County Does Highlights Shortcomings of Database Records
Author: Shane Lambert
January 22nd, 2021
The Sumter County Does have been identified. For fans of unsolved mysteries, this has been a very long time coming. For Websleuths and amateur investigators, it's a huge sigh of relief. The male and female murder victims that were found dead in August of 1976 now have names: they are James Paul Freund and Pamela Mae Buckley.
The case should highlight one glaring fact: the number of missing person cases that do not enter the online and searchable documentary record must be immense. I couldn't find missing person reports for either of the two individuals on the Internet nor in newspapers.com's database, a database that scours an immense volume of historical archives.
I did find legal notices for James P. Freund but not news articles about his disappearance. The difference is important: more people read the news than the classifieds. The following legal notice pertains to the John Doe in the right gravemarker pictured above.
The implications of James Paul Freund's and Pamela Mae Buckley's missing person details not entering the searchable archives cannot be ignored by those that work on missing person cases. These were not people on the fringe of society. If they go missing without entering the newspapers in authored articles or the databases like NamUs, then what should be expected of the more marginalized? There must be thousands and thousands of missing person's cases that aren't getting solved simply because no one is taking the time to get the reports into the newspapers or into databases.
That's important to note, especially in the case of James Paul Freund. He had a ring that bore his initials "JPF," a ring that was found on the John Doe. If James Paul Freund had been entered into NamUs, then I absolutely think that he would have been identified a very long time ago. I think that because the mystery of the Sumter County Does is not your standard John/Jane Doe mystery: this one had a huge following.
Such was the interest in this mystery that I am convinced that someone, like a keener Websleuth, would have plugged the relevant dates into NamUs. You can do that by simply looking for someone who went missing prior to the discovery of the bodies. You select the date of death of the John Doe as the end date for the search and for a start date you could go back a year if you wanted -- or more if you felt it was needed. While such searches would produce small hundreds of matches, it wouldn't take that long to look for someone with the initials JPF that went missing at about the right time. If James Paul Freund had a NamUs profile, then one-half of the Sumter County Does would have been identified ages ago -- I'm sure of that.
The lesson is clear: if you know someone who is missing that is not entered into your government's online resource for missing people, then that is something you should remedy. While it can take a long time to get these databases up to date, there are people that cross-reference missing person's details with John/Jane Does.
Some people who disappear can't be traced, however, many can. That missing person you wonder about needs to be in the searchable archives to stand a better chance of being found. The case of James Paul Freund shows that: he went unidentified for 44 years and, in my opinion, that could have been much shorter. Freund and Buckley were murdered: what a shame it would be if the murderer lived out his natural life when simple data-entry could have produced a break in the case a long time ago.
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