Today I was again reminded that as new and better ways of searching old documents are invented and more and more of these documents are made widely available, then the chance of finding "clues" that may help to solve or at least shed light on past cases becomes far greater.

Though it is an old story by now I just read how the Richard COleman case was solved using I method that I turn to nearly every day in my own field...Genealogical Research. It seems to me that many of the "Lost Love" and "Lost Heirs" segements aired over the years remain unsolved even though the only missing "clue" involves tracing family ties or locating individuals in a certain time and place.

Can anyone think of any UNSOLVED cases that could possibly be solved simply by plugging some names into an Ancestry.com serach field?

If so, remind me and I'll give it a look.

Sean M

Today I was again reminded that as new and better ways of searching old documents are invented and more and more of these documents are made widely available, then the chance of finding "clues" that may help to solve or at least shed light on past cases becomes far greater.

Though it is an old story by now I just read how the Richard COleman case was solved using I method that I turn to nearly every day in my own field...Genealogical Research. It seems to me that many of the "Lost Love" and "Lost Heirs" segements aired over the years remain unsolved even though the only missing "clue" involves tracing family ties or locating individuals in a certain time and place.

Can anyone think of any UNSOLVED cases that could possibly be solved simply by plugging some names into an Ancestry.com serach field?

If so, remind me and I'll give it a look.

Sean M

Thanks for the offer! What about Walter Rice? Its one of those UM segments that didn't seem to air more than once or twice. He was a recluse who lived in a trailer and had worked at restaurants most of his life. Its been a while since I watched it but he apparently died in his trailer and wasn't found until more than a year later (when two people broke into his trailer and found his decomposed body). Such a sad case. He left some substantial money behind and UM was trying to find relatives but as far as I know they never did.

I tried looking into this case a couple of years ago and just tried again. There is no census record of Walter Rice with the information given in the segment. RS tells us the names of his parents and where he was from. An expired Florida driver's license is even depicted with DOB and an address in Sebring, FL. None of this helped. All that I could turn up was an old city directory listing which gives the address of the trailer! Who was this man?

By the way, the location of the trailer is now just a vacant lot. Quite sad.