Pamela Mae Buckley's Missing Photo at NamUs Delayed Match

Author: Shane Lambert

The day of identification finally arrived for the Sumter County Does. They are James Paul Freund and Pamela Mae Buckley.

In a previous blog post, I showed that the identification of James Paul Freund could have been made years ago. The Sumter County John Doe, which was ultimately identified as James Paul Freund, bore a ring with the initials JPF. If James Paul Freund had an online profile with NamUs, for example, I'm sure someone would have looked at the John Doe, noticed the initials matching James Paul Freund's, and noticed that the dates made sense. This would have gotten a ball rolling, I think, into simultaneously solving both the mystery of the Sumter County John Doe and the missing person case of James Paul Freund.

Read PROGRESSIVE JACKPOT -- a short story set in a bowling alley in Edmonton, Alberta.

I further submit that the Sumter County John Doe could have been identified in a much more difficult manner -- even without an online profile. I think the initials were all that were needed to produce a lead in this case. This is a topic I wrote about at Websleuths under my handle "UncoolNegated." 

There is a searching technique that can be used in some databases where question marks can substitute for unknown letters. For example, if you know someone's name starts with a "J" then you can search for "J????" to find all names that start with J that are five letters in length.

The Sumter County John Doe was thought to have JPF as initials. If someone would have searched for "J?????" and "P." and "F??????" in conjunction with "Legal Notices" and "presumed decedent" then it would have produced several thousand hits at newspapers.com. The latter terms are ones that commonly appear in classified ads having to do with the estate settlements of missing people that are assumed to be dead. These kinds of classified ads certainly should be studied by those who work on missing person cases because John Does and Jane Does have their names in these kinds of legal notices for sure.

Admittedly, there is hindsight bias in picking a name of five letters for the first name and a name of six letters for the last name. However, James Paul Freund's legal notice regarding his death in absentia was included in the thousands of hits that came up at newspaper.com when I tested my method out. It would have been tons of work to sort through the thousands of hits, keeping in mind that the name-length combinations would have been large. However, the Sumter County John Doe was identifiable through newspaper archive searches even though only his initials were known.

Sumter County Does Fri, Apr 22, 1988 – 38 · Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) · Newspapers.com

Finding James P. Freund this way, I think, might have taken a volunteer who was organized nearly a year if he/she spent one hour per week working through the false hits to find the good ones. In the case of Pamela Mae Buckley, there was a much simpler method: she simply needed a photo included in her online profiles for her missing person case. 

Let's think about that.

Pamela Mae Buckley is the proper name of the Sumter County Jane Doe. Furthermore, the Sumter County Jane Doe was no ordinary Jane Doe.

This Jane Doe was someone who attracted scores of attention from journalists, unsolved mysteries enthusiasts, composite sketchers, hobbyists that work on missing person cases, her coroner, and law enforcement. The Sumter County Jane Doe had many artistic renderings of her likeness produced. Lo-and-behold, these renderings looked like Pamela Mae Buckley.

According to a post at Websleuths by username Gardener1850, Pamela Mae Buckley had her missing person case profiled at NamUs where she was #MP62300. I think that she was added sometime in 2019. The post at Websleuths commented that there was no photo included with the profile. I couldn't verify this because once an identification is made the profile is deleted from NamUs, however, I do generally trust Websleuths on such matters.

If there had been a photo included, I am absolutely certain that someone would have drawn a comparison between one of the artistic renditions of the Jane Doe (or the Jane Doe's postmortem photos) and Pamela Mae Buckley's likeness. I further submit that this likeness would have produced leads because the dates would have been intriguing: Buckley was last seen in the months that preceded the discovery of the Sumter County Jane Doe. I'm sure it all that would have ultimately produced an identity match quicker than the one that came about. 

Furthermore, it would have saved loads of labor.

In the real world, Buckley was identified after her DNA was matched to her place in her family tree. That required a lucky break -- a living relative uploaded their DNA to 23andme. In this process of identification, the closer the living relative is in the family tree, the quicker the match. My understanding is that it takes an educated group of people who know what they are doing a good while to make such matches in some cases and the effort can be painstaking. It is worth the effort but it's a shame when it has to be done to make up for laziness.

Here's a better idea: when a missing person has their profile added to NamUs, someone get a photo. If there isn't one readily available then make the photo "pending" and someone needs to make the effort to get one whenever possible. I'm willing to practice what I preach as I'll be using the tag "Photo Search" at this site for Jane Does and John Does with no photo.

The solved case of Pamela Mae Buckley actually reminds me of a scene from Naked Gun, starring Leslie Nielsen. A police lab professor has a wild plan for identifying someone, a plan that just might work. When Nielsen, in character as Frank Drebbin, says the plan is too tenuous, the professor instead produces the subject's wallet.

So, instead of identifying Jane Does using DNA and huge family trees with trained staff laboring away, let's first look at the obvious. Jane Does have composite sketches and those sketches can be matched to photos of missing people sometimes. The trick is that it requires some minor effort to locate a photo of the missing person but I think the effort should be made. 

Anyone that suggests that it shouldn't needs to weigh all of the following against the effort of locating a photo: 

• the effort that's put into producing composite sketches
• the effort that goes into amateur investigation from volunteers
• and the effort that a team of trained investigators puts into combing through a Jane Doe's extended family. 

The total volume of this effort wasn't necessary in the Sumter County Jane Doe: Pamela Mae Buckley could have been suggested as the Sumter County Jane Doe from a photo alone and the DNA match could have been made. The amount of effort that was spent on this match could have been much smaller or spent on the many other worthwhile Does that are out there.