SoFla Group Probes Unidentified Dead Cases

New case may lead to Cuba but group needs your help

They call them “the unidentified.” They're people who died with no identification and no way to tell authorities who they are.

There are hundreds of them in South Florida – both children and adults, and now a Broward County organization, "Missing Children Ministries," is asking for your help in identifying three new mystery cases that may involve going to Cuba.

The main clues on their latest investigation: two tattoos.
 
The group’s founder, Dinora Perry, and volunteer forensic artist Lorna Hernandez, want to bring closure for the deceased and for their families. They use exhumations of the bodies to collect DNA and to sketch a face.
 
“Dead bodies speak. They do,” said Perry. “They do, if you listen, they will tell you who they are and a little bit about themselves.”
 
"It's not a pretty picture," said Hernandez, sitting in front of a large computer screen in a darkened room at the Fort Lauderdale Art Institute where she teaches. Hernandez is trying to bring them to life.
 
"The worst thing that you can think of is being in limbo,” she said. "'Where's my child? What happened to my child? Where is my child? What, what, what?' If it's three years or 25 years, I don't think that pain’s going to go away. I just don't.
 
“That's what drives me."
 
Hernandez was enhancing a triangular tattoo from a body found in 1982. The initials, "ZDM," possibly a gang symbol.
 
And another tattoo from the body found next to him, "Asi eres tu," Spanish for "That's the way you are." His ex-girlfriend, perhaps, atop a snakes head. She believes it's a prison tattoo from Cuba.
 
The three bodies were found in the C-51 canal in Palm Beach County in 1982 with a white female. Palm Beach County authorities exhumed the body of the female and Perry’s says they’re considering allowing Hernandez to do a skeletal reconstruction of the woman’s face.
 
Authorities released several crime scene photos of the men but not photos of their decomposed faces so no facial sketching is possible yet. Their two bodies are buried in a cemetery no longer used and with very few gravestones making exhumation nearly impossible.
 
They were murdered two years after the Mariel boatlift brought thousands of freedom-seeking Cubans to America. But Fidel Castro also emptied his prisons and mental hospitals. Miami and America were jolted with crime.
 
And somewhere in the mayhem were three people handcuffed and wrapped in a deflated rubber raft, including the two men with distinct tattoos, one with an Aquarius keychain, and the woman wearing a Camel cigarettes t-shirt.
 
Perry has created a special part of her non-profit she calls "I Am Me."
 
So did someone get away with murder?”
 
“So they think,” she answered. “So they think.”
 
A spreadsheet shows just a fraction of the unidentified bodies locally. But Perry is undaunted.
 
"I don't care if they slam doors in my face. And they have! I don't care if they call me crazy. I don't care - you name it, they've done it,” Perry said.
 
Perry and Hernandez want to go to Cuba to find next of kin. To do that, they'll need the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office to fully open the files. And they need Raul Castro to let them in. They’re concerned that the Castros have no interest in helping anyone from the Mariel boatlift.
 
But then again, Dinora Perry doesn't take no for an answer very easily.
 
If you want to help any of the cases at "I Am Me" or Missing Children Ministries, go to www.missingchildrenministries.org
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