6/21/07 The Untold Story: Awaiting DNA, An Introduction

Three years ago, our family received the shocking news that a body had been found in CA. Officials there thought that this young man was our missing son, Jason. What followed this revelation was one of the most painful periods in our life, other than when Jason disappeared.

We were told by authorities we would have to wait, possibly for months, for the information that would reveal whether or not this person was our son. I then began a diary about our experience, unsure of why I felt compelled to do this and what purpose it might serve in the future. In this diary, I documented my efforts to lessen the waiting. I decided that I would do whatever it took to find the answers and relieve my family’s pain.

For the first time ever, this diary is being made public. Most names and places in the diary have been changed. Our intent is not to disparage the involved agencies. We understand how overworked most agencies are when it comes to missing and unidentified persons. Budgets also often don't allow for training, especially in cases of missing persons.

As we always say, we’re going to have to help the public understand our cause in order for them to be willing to pay more taxes or whatever it takes to properly staff and train law enforcement to handle missing persons’ cases.

We are forever grateful for the assistance we’ve had with Jason’s case.

After we did receive the answer about this unidentified person, it took us a long time to recover from the hurt and then discover what we were to do with our story. What we learned from this experience will be revealed at the end of this series on the Voice for the Missing blog.

A dramatized version of the diary was recorded using volunteer voice talents. If you’d like to listen to the diary only before reading the end of the series on the blog, here are the links to the audio files.(The diary will also be published here.)


There are two parts:

http://www.projectjason.org/audio/AwaitingDNAPart1.mp3

http://www.projectjason.org/audio/AwaitingDNAPart2.mp3

As this blog series is published, additional entries will be linked on this entry for your convenience. If you bookmark this link, then you can return here and follow the links to the additional parts to the story as these are published.

I still dislike looking at it, as it brings back such painful memories, but here is the artist’s rendering of the unidentified male from CA (to your right) and a photo of Jason.
















We hope that in sharing this story, others who are going through something similar will be helped in some small way. And, as mentioned before, at the end of the series, we’ll discuss the other reasons and goals behind it.

Part I:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/62107-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-i.html

Part II:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/62207-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-ii.html

Part III:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/62707-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part.html

Part IV:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/62807-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-iv.html

Part V:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/62907-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-v.html

Part VI:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/06/63007-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-vi.html

Part VII:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/72007-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part.html

Part VIII:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/7507-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part.html

Part IX:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/7607-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-ix.html

Part X:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/71207-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-x.html

Part XI:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/71407-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part-xi.html

Part XII:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/71707-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part.html

Part XIII:
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2007/07/72107-untold-story-awaiting-dna-part.html