text: DETROIT -- Sloppiness. Negligence. Incompetence. Those are the only reasons a grieving couple can think of to explain how their daughter, reported missing in October 2009, ended up buried in an anonymous grave without their knowledge for over six years. 
   
   Rosita Cage-Toaster, who now lives in Atlanta, but at the time was attending University of Detroit Mercy, remembers the call she received nearly eight years ago. 
   
   Detroit police had discovered an abandoned car owned by her daughter, 28-year-old Crissita Elaine Cage-Toaster, on Belle Isle, a large island park east of Downtown Detroit. The young woman's ID, purse and cellphone were inside. 
   
   Rosita Cage-Toaster, 58, and her husband, Johnny Toaster, 64, formally reported their daughter missing Oct. 29, 2009. They gave a detailed description of their adult daughter, including of her distinct tattoos 
   
   "From that day on, I've been searching for her," Cage-Toaster said. 
   
   For years, she periodically called Detroit police investigators hoping for a clue, but nothing turned up. 
   
   Then, on Sept. 29 of this year, Rosita Cage-Toaster received another unforgettable call. 
   
   "It's when we got the news she was deceased, and they actually found the body on March 30, 2010," Cage-Toaster said. 
   
   Their daughter's body was pulled from the Detroit River five months after the initial missing person report, but police and Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office investigators never realized the body was the missing Detroit woman. 
   
   The medical examiner, according to the mother, performed a cursory death investigation, not a full autopsy and tagged her Jane Doe 10-3047. The cause of death has never been determined. 
   
   One major reason the body was never linked to the missing-person report is that both Detroit police, who pulled the body from the river, and the coroner, recorded their daughter as either Caucasian or Hispanic. 
   
   She was black. 
   
   After spending nearly a year in the coroner's cooler, the body was buried in a pine box along with other uncollected or unidentified human remains in an unmarked grave at Knollwood Cemetery in Canton Township. 
   
   There, Crissita Cage-Toaster has remained since March of 2011. 
   
   The county this week notified the parents of plans to exhume their daughter's body. The parents will determine a final resting place of their daughter's remains this week and hold formal memorial service at a Southfield church on Nov. 4. 
   
   'It was a mix-up' 
   
   The parents, though they suspected the worst, never gave up hope their daughter might still be alive. Now they're wondering how the quiet, anonymous burial could have happened, and say they're not getting clear answers. 
   
   "It was a mix-up, they say," said Cage-Toaster, who works at an Atlanta hospital as a nurse unit secretary. "They just say it was a mix-up." 
   
   Her husband, a General Motors retiree, says the Detroit Police Department and Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, which is one of the busiest in the nation, are pointing fingers at each other. 
   
   "Obviously, they did nothing with my daughter," the mother said. "They did no autopsy, nothing. Simple forensics would have told you her ethnicity. 
   
   "The examiner says the Detroit Police Department, they dropped the ball." 
   
   Cage-Toaster called her past attempts to work with Detroit police missing-person detectives a "lost cause." 
   
   "During that time in history, I cannot really account for what may or may not have happened," Detroit Police Lt. Gardner told WXYZ-Channel 7 News, who first reported this story. "But what I can say is that the team we have in place today, they were able to make a turnaround in 24 hours, and they were able to connect the dots." 
   
   Both parents disagree. 
   
   "You didn't do anything," Cage-Toaster said. "If they would have listened me back in 2009, they could have then discovered my daughter." 
   
   She had a tattoo of a large, red rose with the nicknames of each of her parents on her right shoulder, the mother said. 
   
   "I kept telling them to focus on that tattoo," she said. "If they would have first listened to me. 
   
   "That was the key." 
   
   'So many inconsistencies' 
   
   The National Institute of Justice maintains a public database of unidentified remains and missing persons (the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System). The database usually includes details like tattoos that should have signalled a match, based on the description the parents intially reported. 
   
   "There's so many inconsistencies," Cage-Toaster said. "This seems like, to me, you could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle. And they're supposed to be professionals." 
   
   MLive has left mutliple messages with Todd Matthews, who manages the unidentified remains database, attempting to find out when Crissita Cage-Toaster's case was entered and what details it included. 
   
   MLive also posed multiple questions to the Detroit Police Department, and sent a Freedom of Information Act request for autopsy and death records to the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office. 
   
   While Cage-Toaster says representatives from Wayne County Executive Warren Evans' office told her they will pay the exhumation costs, officials refuse to discuss details with MLive, citing privacy concerns. 
   
   Regarding the issues identifiying Crissita Cage-Toaster, Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office spokewoman Lisa Croff, said in an email: 
   
   It was not unnoticed. Ms. Cage's autopsy was performed on March 31, 2010. Her identity was not known. On April 1, 2010, the (Detroit police) filed a standard protocol request for the records. The (medical examiner's office) fulfilled that request providing (Detroit police) the information the (medical examiner) had. After no one claimed her body, she was buried in Canton in March 2011. The (medical examiner) is not the agency that finally made the identification. In 2017, the (Detroit police) notified the (medical examiner's office) that a match had been made and that the body had been ID'd by the parents. The (medical examiner's office) was then able to put a name with a previously unknown case. 
   
   These are the steps the office takes when it receive unidentified remains, according to Croff: 
   
   The body is fingerprinted. If there is a record of those prints, the information is provided by the police department to our investigators for further use in locating and notifying the legal next of kin. If there is no record on file with the police department, then that fact is noted in the case file. 
   
   Medical examiner's office investigators make calls to local police departments for missing person reports that may fit the description of the unknown person. 
   
   Dental impressions and DNA samples are taken and entered into NAMUS for possible matches. 
   
   Investigators use online searches and social media searches in an attempt to find any piece of information that could help ID the body. 
   
   The medical examiner sometimes works with the media to publish information, such as tattoos or other identifying marks, along with details such as where the body was found. 
   
   The University of Michigan Health System, in what was dubbed a $500,000-per-year cost-saving partnership, became the official employer of Wayne County Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Schmidt and his pathologists in 2011. However, Wayne County maintained management control. 
   
   When the contract expired in 2014, it was renewed with additional operational oversight transferred from Wayne County to the University of Michigan. Washtenaw County maintains a similar arrangement with the university. 
   
   'More than meets the eye' 
   
   Following Crissita Cage-Toaster's disappearance, her mother attempted to retrieve her daughter's personal belongings. 
   
   "They wouldn't give it to me when I first reported her missing, because they said it was evidence," she said. 
   
   Now they tell her the items, including a purse, cellphone and other items, can't be found. 
   
   "Everybody is sorry," Cage-Toaster said. "They said it was more than likely thrown away because of the time frame." 
   
   The parents remain dissatisfied with the findings -- or lack of findings -- related to the cause of death, which has been ruled "undetermined." 
   
   "She didn't go to Belle Isle just to jump in some water," Cage-Toaster said. "My husband does believe it was foul play ... I believe there is more to this story than meets the eye." 
   
   According to the national database, there are currently over 14,000 unidentified remains nationwide, 293 in Michigan, including 230 from Wayne County. ||||| DETROIT (WXYZ) - Rosita Cage-Toaster never gave up hope that she'd find her missing daughter. She just never imagined that it would end with such a painful and startling surprise. 
   
   "I never would have thought I'd be living this nightmare. This is hell," she says. 
   
   That nightmare is one that Cage-Toaster has endured for almost 8 years. 
   
   It all started when her 28-year-old daughter Crissita disappeared in Detroit on October 26th, 2009. Her car had been found abandoned near the Belle Isle bridge, with her purse, cell phone and ID still inside. 
   
   The family started putting up missing posters with Crissita's picture. They also filed a police report and told investigators that Crissita had a distinctive rose tattoo. 
   
   Days turned to years, but through it all Cage-Toaster refused to give up on finding her daughter. 
   
   "I knew I had to do my own my work, my own detective work," she says. 
   
   In April, she says she reached out to a national missing persons organization and pleaded for help. She urged them to focus on the fact that Crissita had a distinctive tattoo. 
   
   She told them, "Please focus on the tattoos, one descriptive tattoo was the one with a big rose that said me and my husband's name, our nicknames, Blue and Ro." 
   
   She says that's when they contacted DPD and only then did Detroit Police notice there was indeed a connection between a body found in 2010 and her daughter. It was that unmistakable tattoo. 
   
   urns out, Crissita's body had been found back on March 30th, 2010. That's just 5 months after she'd gone missing. Cage-Toaster was told Crissita had somehow ended up in the Detroit River. 
   
   "I don't want this to happen to nobody, system has to do better," she says. 
   
   So, for almost 8 years, she and her family had no idea that Crissita had been dead. For most of that time, Crissita had been buried at a Canton cemetery, associated only with a number. 
   
   Cage-Toaster says investigators dropped the ball. She says they could have made the tattoo connection right after her daughter's body was found. She also says it was assumed that Crissita wasn't African-American. 
   
   "Someone put down that she was Hispanic or Caucasian. That's what they claim the mix-up was," she says. 
   
   7 Action News went to Detroit Police to try and get some answers. 
   
   Lt. Kenneth Gardner told us, "Her body had been in the river all of that time. The complexion and things of that .. go undergoes a change. It's hard to elaborate on that." 
   
   But there was also that tattoo. Why couldn't that connection have been made years ago? 
   
   "During that time and period in Detroit history, I cannot really account for what may or may not have happened, but what I can say is that the team that we have in place today, they were able to make a turn around in 24 hours and connect the dots," Gardner says. 
   
   Cage-Toaster and her husband say their family would have been spared years of agony had this case been handled the right way. 
   
   "It was rough. It was no easy task going through the 8 years of not knowing where she was," says Johnny Toaster, Crissita's dad. 
   
   "Everybody is 'I'm sorry.. I'm sorry'.. no you're not sorry. You can't feel my pain... You didn't go through what I went through all these years. I don't want to see anybody ever have to go through this," says Rosita Cage-Toaster. 
   
   Crissita's family is hoping to have her body exhumed so they can have a proper burial. 
   
   They also wanted to retrieve her belongings that had been found in her car, but police told them they'd been destroyed. 
   
   The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office tells us they did document Crissita's tattoo in the autopsy report they provided to DPD. 
   
   They also tell us that the appearance of the body gave them no reason to question the ethnicity on the initial report from DPD, which listed her as Caucasian or, possibly, Hispanic. 
   
   Her death was ruled a drowning, circumstances unclear. ||||| DETROIT (AP) — Detroit police recently told the parents of a woman reported missing in 2009 that investigators actually found her body in 2010 and later buried her unidentified remains, blaming the mistake in part on investigative records that wrongly listed her ethnicity. 
   
   The parents of 28-year-old Crissita Cage-Toaster said they gave police a detailed description of their daughter — including of a large rose tattoo on her shoulder that included her parents' nicknames — when they reported her missing in October 2009. Detroit police had discovered the woman's abandoned car, with her purse, ID and cellphone inside, on a large island park east of downtown. 
   
   "From that day on, I've been searching for her," said her mother, Rosita Cage-Toaster. "If they would have listened to me back in 2009, they could have then discovered my daughter." 
   
   Local officials notified her parents this week of plans to exhume the body, which was buried with other unidentified remains at a cemetery west of Detroit about a year after it was discovered. The parents said Detroit police were negligent in their initial investigation. 
   
   Cage-Toaster, who lives in Atlanta, periodically checked in with Detroit detectives in the years after the case went cold. Then in April, she reached out to the National Institute of Justice, which maintains a public database of unidentified remains and missing persons. The database includes details like tattoos. 
   
   Cage-Toaster urged the organization to focus on her daughter's tattoo. She said that's when the organization contacted Detroit police, who later made the connection between a body found in the Detroit River in 2010 and the case of Cage-Toaster's missing daughter. 
   
   Cage-Toaster said Detroit police called her in late September, telling her officers had found her daughter's body about five months after she was reported missing. She said the coroner performed a cursory death investigation, but that a cause of death wasn't determined. 
   
   Police said part of the reason the body wasn't identified was because the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office and Detroit police records listed her ethnicity as Caucasian or Hispanic. She was black. 
   
   "Her body had been in the river all of that time," said Lt. Kenneth Gardner. "The complexion and things of that ... undergoes a change. It's hard to elaborate on that." 
   
   Gardner said it's unclear why police didn't make the connection using the woman's tattoo years ago, but added: "What I can say is that the team we have in place today, they were able to make a turnaround in 24 hours and connect the dots." 
   
   Cage-Toaster said police's explanation doesn't make sense. 
   
   "There's so many inconsistencies," she said. "This seems like, to me, you could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle. And they're supposed to be professionals." 
   
   The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database said there are currently over 14,000 unidentified remains nationwide, nearly 300 of which are in Michigan.
target: – Almost eight years after their daughter's car was found abandoned in Detroit, a Georgia couple held out hope that the missing woman would be found alive. It was hope that should've been dashed within months. The body of Crissita Cage-Toaster was pulled from the Detroit River in March 2010, five months after the 28-year-old vanished, per the AP. But though the woman was black, Detroit police and the coroner determined her body belonged to a white or Hispanic woman. It was labeled "Jane Doe 10-3047," held in a coroner's cooler for a year, then buried with other unidentified remains in an unmarked cemetery grave, a cause of death never established, reports MLive. Rosita Cage-Toaster, 58, and her husband, Johnny Toaster, 64, say authorities only informed them of "a mix-up" a month ago, a few months after the couple asked a missing-persons group for help in the case, per WXYZ. Police now say months in the river had affected their daughter's complexion, but the couple wonders how a large tattoo of a red rose on their daughter's right shoulder wasn't a clear giveaway. "I kept telling them to focus on that tattoo," says Cage-Toaster, per MLive. "You could give this to an elementary school student and they could figure out the puzzle." The pair—who say personal items found in their daughter's car were apparently thrown out—say their daughter's body will be exhumed and they'll figure out where they want to bury her. A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday.