Post by LadyBlue on Sept 17, 2012 16:59:57 GMT -5
Jim Viola, 44, of Bogota, New Jersey, has been searching for his wife for 12 years and found out on Tuesday that the remains that washed up on a Rockaway beach ten years ago belonged to his wife.
Viola told the Cliffview Pilot that it was a difficult time for him.
Patricia Viola, the mother of two disappeared the day before Valentine's Day in 2001. Jim learned that Pat had walked to the neighborhood RiteAid to purchase a Valentine's gift before she went missing, but no one saw anything after that.
The mystery of her disappearance continued and questions went unanswered as Jim theorized that maybe Viola had a seizure as a result of her epilepsy or that she may have taken a taxi somewhere and was suffering from amnesia.
Jim became an advocate for missing persons and for a law that he wanted to see passed. The law would allow authorities to collect DNA from missing people and entering them into a national database. He called it "Patricia's Law," which was adopted in March 2008.
In July 27, 2002, over a year after Pat went missing, a local man found a sock with bones in it, along with shoes on the beach off 123rd Street. Because of 9/11, it wasn't till 2006 before DNA samples were taken from those bones, but sadly, no matches were ever made.
In April 2011, Jim was encouraged to update the families DNA samples and new samples were taken from Pat's son and daughter. The extracted DNA then was put into the Combined DNA Index System, but there was no match because Pat's remains still had not been put into the database.
"You have to make sure the DNA, dental records and fingerprints are put into every law enforcement database, but you also have to be lucky," explains Gary Micco the Viola families private investigator. "For on the other end, if there is a discovery of a deceased person or body part that law enforcement take DNA from that person, and that has to be in the system as well. You need to have two to make a match."
www.examiner.com/article/pat-viola-remains-of-new-jersey-woman-missing-since-2001-identified
Viola told the Cliffview Pilot that it was a difficult time for him.
Patricia Viola, the mother of two disappeared the day before Valentine's Day in 2001. Jim learned that Pat had walked to the neighborhood RiteAid to purchase a Valentine's gift before she went missing, but no one saw anything after that.
The mystery of her disappearance continued and questions went unanswered as Jim theorized that maybe Viola had a seizure as a result of her epilepsy or that she may have taken a taxi somewhere and was suffering from amnesia.
Jim became an advocate for missing persons and for a law that he wanted to see passed. The law would allow authorities to collect DNA from missing people and entering them into a national database. He called it "Patricia's Law," which was adopted in March 2008.
In July 27, 2002, over a year after Pat went missing, a local man found a sock with bones in it, along with shoes on the beach off 123rd Street. Because of 9/11, it wasn't till 2006 before DNA samples were taken from those bones, but sadly, no matches were ever made.
In April 2011, Jim was encouraged to update the families DNA samples and new samples were taken from Pat's son and daughter. The extracted DNA then was put into the Combined DNA Index System, but there was no match because Pat's remains still had not been put into the database.
"You have to make sure the DNA, dental records and fingerprints are put into every law enforcement database, but you also have to be lucky," explains Gary Micco the Viola families private investigator. "For on the other end, if there is a discovery of a deceased person or body part that law enforcement take DNA from that person, and that has to be in the system as well. You need to have two to make a match."
www.examiner.com/article/pat-viola-remains-of-new-jersey-woman-missing-since-2001-identified