Roxboro officer solves four of NC's nameless dead cold cases

Unidentified people: Map & searchable database

Howe is credited with identifying four men who died in North Carolina between 1998 and 2001 and whose names were unknown for more than a decade. What has shocked state medical examiner officials is that Howe took on the cases himself – none of which have ties to Roxboro – and was able to identify the men in two days during his time off from work.

"I was stunned," said Clyde Gibbs, a medical examiner specialist who handles the state's unidentified dead cases. "At first, I was kind of like, ‘Oh my, it’s not possible.'"

'They're like puzzles:' Inside NC's effort to identify nameless dead

Gibbs immediately sent Howe's findings to the State Bureau of Investigation, which confirmed Howe's discovery. Gibbs also alerted retired Chief Medical Examiner Dr. John Butts, who completed an autopsy on one of the unknown men.

"(Butts) was totally confused as to why a Roxboro guy was involved," Gibbs said, adding that he set up a call between the men to discuss the case.

Howe says he began looking at the cases in February after talking with a colleague at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, where he teaches forensic science. He wanted to show her the power of fingerprints and how they can be helpful in identifying people.

"I saw a discrepancy in the fingerprinting patterns. The fingerprints were backwards," Howe said. "I had a gut feeling there was going to be a result out of this."

Fifteen minutes later, he matched the man's prints to an arrest record in New York – Francis Richard Valent, a white man, age 46, whose last known address was Binghamton, N.Y. An autopsy report shows he was lying on sheets of cardboard between railroad tracks in Durham when a train struck him. His blood-alcohol level was 0.09.

At the time of Valent's death, police could only run fingerprints in a statewide database. New technology now allows Howe and others to search nationwide.

"I knew the technology we have here could be helpful," Howe said. "The integration of technology has improved over the last 10 years."

But even with the upgraded technology, human errors still prevent some cases from being solved. As in Valent's case, his fingerprints were processed incorrectly at the time of his death. Howe says he was able to spot the error through his training as a latent print examiner.

"I'm not trying to fault anybody for what they're doing," Howe said. "You would expect administrative errors to occur."

After successfully identifying Valent, Howe decided to keep going and spent an entire weekend searching through more unidentified cases that had fingerprint cards on file. After two days, he identified three more men through fingerprints from arrest records:

The challenge now is finding the men's families to let them know what happened. Gibbs has reached out to the agencies that handled the cases, and Howe has been searching through public records, hoping to track down the men's families.

"That's almost as hard as identifying them," Howe said.

Gibbs says he hopes Howe's fingerprint work will lead to more cases being solved.

"I’m almost wondering if I shouldn’t send out all my fingerprinting cards to (Howe) and let him get the job done faster," Gibbs said. "He’ll definitely be on my radar."

Howe says he was happy to help, even though it meant working on his days off.

"I think we have this duty to go in and help these families find their loved ones," he said. "If I met an unfortunate end, I would hope there would be someone out there trying to figure out who I am."