The Found & Forgotten Files are the biggest mysteries within the Broward Sheriff's Office and the cases are extremely difficult to solve.
In the eight years since the launch of Operation Found & Forgotten, only one person has been identified.
It was a case that riddled BSO for a quarter century. Blonde hair and blue eyes stared off into the distance for decades. She was an enigma. Her name was unknown until special investigators posted her case online and crossed their fingers.
"That particular case when we were reviewing it, we had partial fingerprints we could resubmit and have them revisited and in that case, we were fortunate enough to get a hit," said Sgt. Scott Champagne with BSO.
It was Sgt. Champagne's case and the first identified in the Found & Forgotten Files. Her name was Mary Ann Lambert and her brother had recognized her on BSO's website.
Lambert was raped and murdered in 1983, found seven blocks from her home in Pompano Beach. Once detectives knew who she was, the investigation shifted from finding her name to finding her killer.
"It gives a heartbeat to a case that didn't have one. Again, it gave us a little bit of hope, nicknames of people we want to look at. Unfortunately, through the course of time you lose a lot of that," Sgt. Champagne said.
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The most recent case in the Found & Forgotten Files was discovered inside a Dania Beach home in 2009. A man's body found badly burned in a fire. Was it homicide or a natural death? Those questions can't be answered when his name is unknown.
Whether the case dates to the 1960's or the last decade, investigators hold onto the evidence.
"We take all of it and hold it in evidence and depending on where the investigation takes us in the future. In the 60s and 70s, they didn't know about DNA. We could be sitting here and 40-50 years from now there could be a new type of science we're not aware of. So we want to hold on to all this for future endeavors as well," said Lt. Ken Kaminsky with BSO.
That means holding on to body parts because bones can help tell the story.
One man's skull was found with his fillings still intact. Capt. Fernando Gajate worked to recreate his face with hopes it will spark someone's memory.
"You don't know if they had a mustache or beard, how bushy their eyebrows were, dimples, things like that, the skull can't tell you that. So it'll be a challenge to find a facial triangle, which is what a person focuses on when they see someone's face," Capt. Gajate explained.
Each of Capt. Gajate's sketches and molds are posted onto the BSO Found & Forgotten website for the public to see. That's the main way detectives expect to get leads on their 66 remaining cases. Until they're identified, it's impossible to hunt down their killers.
"It's not over dramatic to say that, the reality is, there's a potential there's a killer on the loose. Reality could be that he gets away with one and commit another," Sgt. Champagne said.
To learn more about Operation Found & Forgotten and to flip through the files of unsolved cases, click here.
