A measure working its way through Congress seeks to improve the way state and federal officials track missing persons and keep family members informed, reports USA Today. “Billy’s Law,” sponsored by Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and named after a Connecticut man who disappeared in 2004, would combine two Justice Department databases of missing people and unidentified remains, Murphy said.
The bill would require the FBI to share data on 98,058 unresolved missing persons cases from its National Crime Information Center database with the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) to create a centralized database for all missing persons and unidentified cases that the public can access on the Internet. There is no formal system for sharing information between the two databases. An initial hearing on the legislation should be held within a month, Murphy said. There is no companion legislation in the Senate.