This project has been presented to the
MTSU Honors College.

For more information about The Doe Network, click here.

The goal for this project was to create a series of multi-media journalistic audio stories detailing the work of Todd Matthews, creator of “The Doe Network'', a valuable resource in

identifying human remains whose bodies have been recovered by public citizens and law enforcement. Matthews uses this group to harness the power of the internet to help solve the “nation’s silent mass disaster,” a phrase coined by the

National Missing and Unidentifiable Person System. Rising in popularity and aligning with my passions, the creative portion

of my thesis is a true-crime podcast. Each episode details

what “The Doe Network” is and dives into multiple cases that Matthews has worked over twenty years.

 

Episode One - Recomposing the Decomposed

Episode Two - Who Is Tent Girl

Episode Three - Who Is Charlie

Episode Four - Who Is Steve

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I came to MTSU in the Fall of 2019 planned for the day that I

get to ring the Honor’s College bell. One year ago I began thinking about what I would be ringing the bell for. Rising in popularity, a podcast stuck to me. That’s when I thought of the true-crime route. I began to research unsolved murders and

20 year cold cases when my thesis director, Assistant Professor Leon Alligood, told me about Todd Matthews. Instantly I clung

to the idea of picking his brain and learning about what he has been so passionate about. The “Silent Mass Disaster”. 

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According to the National Missing and Unidentifiable Person System, over 600,000 individuals go missing in the United

States every year and according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, out of individuals who are not found alive, there

are about 40,000 bodies awaiting identification in the United States. Less than 10% of those bodies are identified every year. Groups like The Doe Network act as internet anthropologists digging up information and then connecting it online. They

assist police officers and families to reunite them with loved

ones and give them closure.

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To be able to take something that I am interested in and something that creates change is what I always envisioned in

my time at MTSU. Through each episode of this podcast,

I believe that I am doing that.