Stacks of binders full of grainy photos and lists of names are stacked on Tamara Lamoureaux’s desk. She’s the Reno Police Department missing person investigator, and in her first year on the job, she’s chipping away at the city’s cold cases.
Lamoureaux closed one case recently, when she linked a missing girl from Reno to a 2009 homicide in Irvine, California.
“Sometimes the case is like, you have this tiny little thread, and then you just keep pulling on it and pulling on it and pulling on it and seeing where it goes until it stops,” she said.
Though the answer isn’t always satisfying. After running away from her home in Reno, 14-year-old Marcia Thomas was murdered. The killers lit her body on fire and left her in a business parking lot.
“I thought when the DNA results came that I would feel like I do in some other cases, where it’s like, yes, I solved it, but this one felt like a gut punch,” she said.
On the other hand, finding living missing people can mean reunifying a family. When Laura Taylor’s aunt went missing, her family assumed the worst.
“I spent probably about a week calling every mortuary out in the Nevada area,” Taylor told 2 News Nevada during a Zoom call.
She said without Lamoreaux's help, her family wouldn’t have found her missing aunt, who had been transferred through multiple medical facilities in a confusing chain of events.
“Just knowing that she was in a safe spot and being taken care of, and we’re getting everything that she needs now, is amazing,” Taylor said.
