Unidentified Person Florida U.S. Paratroopers

9/13/2017

Paratrooper Doe Florida unidentified missing person 1984

21 to 30 year old White Male

Date found May 26, 1984 Fort Lauderdale Florida

The left arm has a tattoo reading "Born to Fly" and the right arm has tattoo reading "U.S. Paratroopers".

For more information on this case as well as a shareable poster for social media go to the Top Case page.

https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/1254

6 Comments

Candice

5/12/2018 12:51:10 pm

There is o e similar around that time said to be in Florida by the name of Terrance schram fits the description and has a contact info for department investigating if you look it up you can see it

Veteran Doe

5/23/2018 10:01:42 am

I took a look at that when I saw your Facebook comment. I wish we could see Terrance's tattoo better.

https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/1750

Kate

12/6/2018 11:20:24 am

His tattoo is indicative of US Army Airborne. Being a maroon beret, he was likely stationed at Fort Bragg or did Airborne school there. I submitted the case to Fort Bragg Criminal Investigative Division, he might match up to a missing/AWOL soldier.

Veteran Doe

12/6/2018 11:43:01 am

Thank you for looking into that!
I had submitted his case to the department listed here: http://fugitives.army.mil/deserters.aspx since they had some with good timing if he was active duty.
I never got a response though.
Hopefully your submission will shake a name out!

Lori Anne Young

12/13/2018 11:46:30 am

All of us get fingerprinted in the military...how have they not identified him with fingerprints....??

Veteran Doe

12/13/2018 01:48:42 pm

It's a great point you bring up but there are a couple issues with the fingerprints.
The older prints that are on print cards are not all in any centralized database. In this case the John Doe's prints are quite wrinkled from the water submersion so his would be difficult in a computer check and would likely require a manual comparison which is a monumental task without a name to compare them to.
Also, you have an expectation of privacy regarding your fingerprints. Law enforcement cannot randomly submit prints to be checked against all personnel. They need a name to do a comparison, except in the case of felons. Felony convictions cause the person to lose most of their rights to privacy and then those prints are included in the FBI's database.
I wrote a blog post about fingerprint issues a while back which was basically my summary of an excellent book on the topic.
It's crazy the amount of databases there are: local, state, federal, even banks have them, and each one has a different set of privacy rules.
A name to compare prints to is the key. Especially in this case where they would probably need to do the comparison manually.
Thank you for looking at his case!

Unidentified Persons