Forensics Journal - Stevenson University 2010 | Page 15

FORENSICS JOURNAL

In that vein, Riggs puts some stock in the possible involvement of
Arthur Kinlaw, a career pimp who is now serving a lengthy prison
sentence in New York state.17 Riggs has never met the inmate, but
Lieutenant Detective Speirs actually interviewed Kinlaw. Speirs came
away from that interview believing that he, Kinlaw, was somehow
connected to Princess Doe’s death, even if, as Kinlaw himself asserted,
he never actually knew the girl’s name.18 Likewise, Donna Kinlaw
(who was married to Arthur Kinlaw in the 1980s, and also served
time in New York for a manslaughter conviction she incurred as a
result of being involved with another one of Arthur Kinlaw’s crimes,
but has since been released19) revealed details about several other murders of young women that only she and/or her then-husband could
have known.20 These two individuals might hold the key to Princess
Doe’s death, if not her identity. Still, the passage of so much time
since the murder’s occurrence only makes the obtaining and corroborating of any fading memories or vague recollections – by the Kinlaws
or anyone else who might come forward – all the more difficult. The
best hope is for a person or persons to emerge who can positively
identify Princess Doe, and perhaps only then might her story’s final
chapter be written.21

nationwide. Cases involving unidentified remains are not a top priority for most law enforcement agencies, primarily because of the previously cited budgetary and manpower limitations, but also because
the nameless dead have no family or friends to act as advocates. Thus,
there is no one—barring, of course, the intervention of someone with
Riggs’s dedication—available to continuously monitor the progress
of such cases. By tirelessly championing and publicizing his case,
Riggs hopes and believes that he can help surmount the bureaucratic
obstacles that allow many more such cases to languish or be forgotten.
Finally, in defense of all of the amateur sleuths or would-be sleuths
who have come to embrace the internet as yet another tool for solving
mysteries: it is all well and good to sit at one’s own computer and try
to match missing persons with unidentified remains, but it is a vastly
more daunting task to be part of an investigative team charged with
examining forensic evidence related to the discovery of unidentified
human remains. No one’s efforts or interest, however, should ever be
considered too trivial or mundane to be somehow useful. It can only
be hoped that the Princess Doe website’s mission – to identify the victim of a crime, as well as her murderer – can finally be accomplished
before too much more time has passed, and that all of the painstaking
work that has gone into the website’s creation and upkeep will thus
not have been in vain.

Riggs emphasi