In 1979, when Koppelman was 16, 16-year-old Lucinda Lynn Schaefer was killed by the "tool box killers" in neighboring Redondo Beach, California.

[3] After college, Koppelman worked as an internal auditor for the Los Angeles County Municipal Court, and a Senior Accountant for Princess Cruises, based in Santa Clarita, California.

[3] Following that, Koppelman worked as a Senior Financial Analyst for The Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California[3] until 2009, when his aging mother's failing health prevented him from making the commute.

[1] Koppelman first became truly interested in crime and forensics in August 2009, after the media storm surrounding the safe return of Jaycee Dugard.

[7] Koppelman reports sitting in his mother's home on the computer, looking at online news articles about the case and photos of Dugard.

[3] Through his seeking of material about the case, Koppelman first came across Websleuths, a forum website for armchair enthusiasts of crime investigation.

[4] Over time, Koppelman shifted from reading the discussions to pitching in on them, spending up to 12 hours a day searching for leads, from sources such as old yearbooks and Classmates.com pages.

[8] Koppelman has stated that the skills he learned as an accountant helped him in his pursuits as a web sleuth,[9] including the large spreadsheet he keeps of listings from NamUs.

[10] Koppelman's first reconstruction was of a male found dead of accidental causes in a motel in Philadelphia in 2006,[9][1][11] later identified as Joseph Cole.

[5] Koppelman also works by request with local law enforcements,[9] and is a volunteer at the DNA Doe Project,[2] where he helps to do genealogical research in addition to providing reconstructions.

[4] Koppelman's Websleuths involvements in multiple cases have been reported in the press, most famously those of Tammy Alexander and Sherri Jarvis.

[9] On 1 November 1980, a passing truck driver on Interstate 45 in Huntsville discovered the nude body of a young teenaged girl beside the road in Walker County, Texas.

[19] Witnesses report having last seen the girl hitchhiking at the nearby Hitchin' Post truck stop, and she had told a waitress there that she was from Rockport or Aransas Pass, Texas.

[9] In addition to making multiple reconstructions of Walker County Jane Doe, Koppelman spent a significant amount of hours combing forensic files and police reports on the case,[15] as well as searching old yearbooks from high schools in Texas.

[2] Koppelman also started and maintained a Facebook page dedicated to the case, called "Who Was Walker County Jane Doe".

[5] Koppelman began to research the case, including looking through news articles and dedicated social media pages, as well as missing persons database.

[5] While looking through missing person listings on NamUs, Koppelman identified Aundria Bowman as a strong candidate for being Racine County Jane Doe.

[5] Terkanian first heard of her daughter's disappearance in 2010, when she was asked to provide a DNA sample to compare to the Racine County Jane Doe (later identified as Peggy Johnson).

[5] Koppelman and Terkanian made four trips to Michigan to interview friends of Aundria and pressure law enforcement into investigating.

[21] In 2014, Christina Scates, a local college student, was doing genealogy research in cemetery records when she rediscovered the unidentified burial.

[21] Shortly after seeing Scates' post, Koppelman was contacted by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office to work on an unrelated case.

[21] Koppelman asked for higher quality photos of the unidentified skeleton, and it was realized that a clerical error had prevented the case from being listed in NamUs.

[16] Within a year of Koppelman inquiring about the case, Akron law enforcement reached out to Cuyahoga County with the theory that Strongsville Jane Doe could be Linda Pagano.