https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/unidentified-remains-present-challenges-to-investigators-medical-examiners/article_9df053e1-bd58-586b-8548-b330fae0e21f.htmlUnidentified remains present challenges to investigators, medical examinersBy DEBORAH HIGHLAND dhighland@bgdailynews.com
Jul 12, 2015
Murdered and stuffed into a small bluish green American Tourister suitcase, the skeletal remains of a 21/2-year-old biracial girl are now stowed away in a white plastic box bearing the investigative number of the state’s medical examiner.
The remains are stored in the Louisville office along with the skeletal remains of many others found dead in Kentucky but not identified.
No more information is known about the toddler today than when an Army Corps of Engineer employee found her in the Skaggs Creek area of Barren River Lake in Barren County under sunny skies on a blazing hot August day in 1989.
“She’s up here with me,” assistant medical examiner Dr. Amy Burrows-Beckham said. “We’ve tried several times and can’t get any DNA from her bones. I’m afraid that will still be unresolved.”
Burrows-Beckham is the Kentucky case manager for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System known as NamUs. It is a free searchable database that contains information on missing and unidentified people. Maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice, NamUs can be used by the general public and is also used by medical examiners, coroners and law enforcement.
There are 56 unidentified decedents under investigation in Kentucky, Burrows-Beckham said. Fifty-three of those cases are listed on the NamUs site available to the public. Two of the cases are human remains that when found consisted of a single jaw bone and a foot. Of the remaining 54, 19 are female and 35 are male. Of those cases, Kentucky State Police Post 3 in Bowling Green has nine, including the most recent discovery of an unidentified a body believed to be a female found June 25 in a field near a Hart County truck stop.
“They all have different stories,” Burrows-Beckham said about the remains. “They all are essentially saying ‘figure out who we are and what happened to us.’ They all are heartbreaking because we don’t know who they are. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a missing loved one. Everybody on NamUs is heartbreaking.”
The cases are tough also for investigators. Statistically, most people die at the hands of someone they know, making victim identification the first step in a homicide investigation.
“When we can’t figure out who they are, it puts us at a great disadvantage,” KSP Post 3 Lt. Bryan Whittaker said.
In the case of the toddler found in Barren River Lake, investigators have made attempts to have DNA extracted from the bones. Police received three quick telephone calls from someone claiming to be an attorney who asked that immunity be granted to a woman who had information about the child immediately after the discovery. No other calls followed those first three.
In a nearly 14-year-old case of a woman whose body was found Oct. 9, 2001, near Interstate 65 in Simpson County, police have DNA and have released information about the woman having a tattoo outline of a rose on her left breast. She was also wearing two rings, one a gold band and the other a silver floral ring with a blue painted enamel background.
“We still don’t know who she is,” KSP Lt. Tim Adams said.
At one point KSP Detective Jason Lanham tracked down the manufacturer of the blue enamel ring only to find out it had been mass-produced, Lanham said.
The woman’s death and the killer’s dumping ground fit the modus operandi of a truck driving serial killer serving time in Mississippi, Lanham said.
“He gave information that could lead us to believe that he did it,” Adams said.
But the man claimed to have killed so many women that he didn’t remember them all. Without a name and a photograph of what the woman looked like he couldn’t be sure if she was one of his victims, Adams said.
“Identifying her would be crucial to that case,” Lanham said. “She’s probably not local.”
When Burrows-Beckham first receives remains that are either skeletal or so badly decomposed it can’t be determined if the deceased is a male or female, her first order of business is to document everything about the body by taking pictures and jotting down notes, such as the state of decomposition and anything that is found with the body.
In the recent Hart County case, along with the remains, investigators noted that the deceased had been wearing a brass colored “S” medallion. She was wearing teal and white Wilson tennis shoes, red panties and a Southern Comfort T-shirt. She also wore a stud earring with a pink colored stone in one ear, police said.
“We’ll go through them, if they are skeletal remains, we will try to put them together, lay them out in the form of a person,” Burrows-Beckham said. “If there are jaws with teeth, we will consult with our forensic odontologist ... . He will document the dental records to do a dental identification. That’s so much faster than DNA.”
If a dental match can’t be established, the medical examiner’s office will send off samples for DNA testing, she said.
Burrows-Beckham also relies on information that forensic anthropologists glean from human remains.
In a 2011 case in Barren County in which the skeletal remains of a Native American woman were found, a forensic anthropologist determined the woman had been scalped.
State contractors spraying trees west of Glasgow near mile marker 8 along the eastbound stretch of the Louie B. Nunn Cumberland Parkway found the woman’s skull after sunrise Aug. 15, 2011. The skull had been pierced by a bullet. Police searched the area and found several other bones that had been scattered.
Her cause of death appears obvious. But her identity and her killer remain a mystery.
“There is nothing else like forensic pathology, working with the dead people and trying to figure out why they died, how they died, when they died and who they are,” Burrows-Beckham said.
Twenty years into her career, Burrows-Beckham gets tremendous satisfaction out of solving the riddles that killers leave behind.
“When we figure it out, it’s very rewarding, unbelievably rewarding,” she said. “If you can help determine a cause of death and manner of death that will lead to a successful prosecution, that’s very rewarding.”
— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter at twitter.com/BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.
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