Identifying remains is getting simpler for forensic scientists, but to make sure every case is solved, they need help from law enforcement agencies and families.

Friday afternoon, forensic scientists with the Center for Human Identification held a workshop at New Mexico State University to help Las Cruces law enforcement agencies in identifying remains.

Dr. Arthur Eisenberg from the University of North Texas and CHI expressed his thoughts. "I can't even imagine what it's like to wake up every morning not knowing where your loved one, your parent, your child is," he said.

Currently CHI is working to try to identify about 1,500 sets of remains.

“The DNA is a big help, but what we need is cooperation from people who are missing someone, to get their DNA samples into the database," said Dr. Harrell King from the University of North Texas and CHI.

Eisenberg said the vast majority of unidentified human remains are murder victims. "What we hope to do through this identification is provide law enforcement that first investigative lead because there is a murderer out there,” Eisenberg said.

CHI uses state-of-the-art DNA technology and wants to educate all law enforcement agencies, to let them know these technologies are available to them free of charge.

"Jurisdictions have buried these remains as Jane and John Does, or they've even worse cremated them without retention of any sample,” said Eisenberg.

As the forensic scientist mentioned, the technology is there to identify human remains, but without a family member's sample such as a swab, it makes the identification process close to impossible.