Can DNA Help ID Missing Persons?

May 14, 2005 — -- Brooke Wilberger, a 19-year-old college student, was last seen a year ago at an apartment complex near Oregon State University. All she left behind in a parking lot were her flip-flops.

Her family is devastated.

"You'd think that it'd get better as time goes on," said her mother, Cammy Wilberger. "The pain's still there. It doesn't go away."

"We really don't know much more about it today than we knew then," said her father, Greg Wilberger.

Wilberger is one of more than 100,000 people the government lists as missing. Police say the people may have disappeared for personal reasons or were the victims of accidents or crimes where little evidence was left behind.

Now, the Justice Department is allocating millions of dollars to expand the use of DNA technology, and says it is rethinking ways to use such technology to tackle all those unsolved cases.

Currently, there is no national database that contains the DNA of the thousands of missing. Police say if there was, they could at least ease the pain of families when unidentified murder victims turn up.

"If we can do something to bring closure and to help other innocents avoid feeling the pain that a family of a homicide victim feels, it's worth any effort," U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey said.

In fact, there are estimates of 40,000 people per year buried nameless. In New York City, roughly 1,000 a year are buried at Potter's Field, where there are no headstones, and only one marker for every 96 graves.

"For every Jane Doe or John Doe who is carried on a police ledger as an unknown, there is a Mr. and Mrs. Doe, who are parents who have a hole in their life that just can't be imagined," Comey said.

The Wilbergers hope their daughter will return alive. But if not, they just want to know.

"You just can't move ahead because you keep thinking that you're leaving her behind," Greg Wilberger said.

Police believe she was abducted, but have very little to go on.

"We're running out [of leads]," said Ron Noble of the Corvallis Police Department in Oregon. "We don't have as many leads to follow up on."

ABC News' Pierre Thomas in Washington originally reported this story May 1, 2005, for "World News Tonight."