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Investigator Aims To ID Unclaimed Remains

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By JOSH POLTILOVE

jpoltilove@tampatrib.com

Published: February 25, 2009

TAMPA - As a forensic investigator with the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office, Pete Bihorel's job includes identifying remains. To do that, he reaches out to the public for help.

But fears over deportation among a growing segment of the public may hinder those efforts. Some of the 10 to 12 people of Hispanic descent whose unidentified remains are in storage may have been illegal immigrants, and the people who can identify them might be, too.

"I just feel like I have to do something," Bihorel said.

On Tuesday, he traveled to a center in Plant City that offers services to Hispanic people. An employee at the center agreed to make copies of the information Bihorel provided and pass it on to caseworkers.

In September, Bihorel said, he spoke with an employee at a mission in Ruskin that helps illegal immigrants. He provided sketches of some of those whose remains are unidentified in hopes the mission would encourage people to speak up.

The efforts haven't yielded results so far, but Bihorel plans more visits.

Bihorel has files with information about unidentified corpses, skulls or skeletal remains found in Hillsborough County. Some files date to the 1970s.

The medical examiner's Web site includes information on unidentified remains, such as renderings of what the person might have looked like, physical descriptions, scars, tattoos and what the person was wearing when found.

LEARN MORE

•Hillsborough County remains:

www.hillsboroughcounty .org/medexam/about/unidentified.cfm

•Florida remains:

www.fluiddb.com

•Arizona Daily Star's "Death On The Border" database:

http://regulus.azstarnet .com/borderdeaths/search.php

•National site for unidentified remains:

www.identifyus.org

•National site for missing people:

www.find-the-missing.org

Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at (813) 259-7691. Go to TBO.com, Keyword: Unidentified, to see the information from Bihorel's files plotted on a map.

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