Melissa Phillip / Staff PhotographerJoseph Fritts,
“I was shocked,” she recalled. “Because there’s no requirement to use it. … and people assume it’s something that’s already happening.” But the bill requires entry of cases only after it took effect in September 2021. Advocates for the nameless dead say that could leave relatives of unidentified older Jane and John Does in the lurch, their cases unexamined. And they noted that the bill doesn’t have any accountability metric to ensure police or medical examiners do as required. But one analysis of the law found that“The hope was that they would do the right thing,” Hull said.
Brooks County, located about 40 miles north of the border, leads all Texas counties in unidentified cases reported to NAMUS. Brooks joins other counties near the U.S.-Mexico border, like Pima, AZ, in its struggle to identify nameless border crosses who often die as a result of dehydration and starvation. Despite its population of less than 10,000 people, Brooks has over 380 cases, with new cases added every month.
When the Chronicle asked justices of the peace across Texas for information about their nameless dead, many JPs in smaller counties said they did not know of any cases, even though they'd been listed in NaMus. In Austin County, Precinct 4 Place 1 Justice of the Peace Bernice Burger said she had not handled any nameless dead case in her precinct. But her records are not computerized, she said. Nor are they even in her office.
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