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Discovered in Connecticut long after they died, these three nameless bodies are among about 40,000 that linger in morgues and unmarked plots throughout the country:
Waterbury police Lt. Christopher Corbett said advances in DNA profiling and other investigatory tools, paired with the NamUs national database, should prove helpful to police tracking baffling cases such as the remains of the African American woman found in his city six years ago.

"Unidentified bodies is a major problem in law enforcement," Corbett said.

Approximately 4,400 nameless bodies surface annually, and about 1,000 of those remain unidentified at the end of each year. At the same time, law enforcement officials throughout the nation are faced with about 100,000 missing-persons cases.

In 2005, the federal government brought together police, medical examiners, forensic scientists, policy makers, victims' advocates and families of missing loved ones to build a national database to cross-check the cases. NamUs.gov was the result.

The system automatically seeks matches for race, age, height and other factors between missing persons and unidentified remains, NamUs coordinator Billy Young said. Potential matches are forwarded to case investigators, who can then compare dental records of a missing person with the teeth in an unidentified body.

The site scores each nameless body for identification potential. The more identifying characteristics present, the higher the potential for a match. For example, a skeleton minus its skull is likely to have a low identification potential, while a body found soon after death, with available fingerprints, teeth, clothing, scars and other identifiers, is potentially much easier to link with a missing person.

NamUs.gov allows loved ones of missing persons and even amateur detectives to register on the site and enter information. Registered users can enter dental records, information on tattoos and detailed descriptions of a vehicle the missing person was last seen driving. To prevent hoaxes, information must be cleared through a NamUs system administrator or a law enforcement official, Young said.

Soon after Jody King disappeared in Enfield in April, his aunt in Texas entered a detailed profile of King, including dental records, on NamUs.gov, Casey King, Jody's wife, said Tuesday.