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Database Helps ID Missing

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By TOM BRENNAN

tbrennan@tampatrib.com

Published: November 17, 2008

TAMPA - It started when Greg Berg was trying to identify an aviator whose remains were discovered in Laos.

Along with the bones were four shards from the lens of a pair of prescription sunglasses.

He took the fragments to the optometry lab at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii where he works as a forensic anthropologist.

"We had a short list of names and I asked if they matched any of them," he recalled.

They had a match, but Berg wondered if the prescription might match anyone else not on the list.

When no one could give him an answer, he decided to create a solution. He amassed a database of eyeglass prescriptions. Besides identifying service personnel, it also has been used by authorities in Honolulu to obtain an arrest and conviction in the killing of a Japanese tourist.

"Technology is increasing all the time and a lot of technological leaps are being made that will help us with MIAs," he said.

Berg was in Tampa last week for a lecture at the University of South Florida.

He said he hopes technological progress will eventually help identify nearly 400 Florida service personnel listed as missing in action in the nation's wars.

"For those families out there still waiting, never give up hope," he said. "We're working every single day to make sure that every last U.S. service person comes home."

"We will eventually find them. We will eventually have the ability to identify them."

Jim LaGarde of Durant doesn't think technology will help bring his missing cousin home from Vietnam.

"Anything will help," he said. "It is just luck if they find someone's body."

LaGarde didn't want to discuss the details of his cousin's life or even give his name.

"I just wish our government got into it more," he said.

Berg said the people at his lab spend all their time trying to bring people like LaGarde closure.

He said lab members don't often get to meet the families, but when they do it exceeds the satisfaction possible from field and lab work.

One of Berg's talks at USF was about the Hawaiian case.

Masumi Watanabe had gone missing and her body had never been recovered.

Witnesses said they saw her talking to someone in a pest control truck. The driver was later identified and detectives found eyeglasses in his truck.

The glasses were run against Berg's database and helped tighten the legal noose against Matthew Kirk Lankford, who received a life sentence in August for Watanabe's death.

Berg said Watanabe's eye prescription was unique to her.

"It allowed authorities to link more and more bits of evidence to the defendant," he said.

Reporter Tom Brennan can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tbrennan@tampatrib.com.

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