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#Post#: 9108--------------------------------------------------
Re: BARREN COUNTY DOE (1989): WF, 2-3, found in a suitcase along
Barren River Lake - 20 August 1989
DIR By: Akoya
Date: September 28, 2020, 11:56 am
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HTML https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/unidentified-remains-present-challenges-to-investigators-medical-examiners/article_9df053e1-bd58-586b-8548-b330fae0e21f.html
Unidentified remains present challenges to investigators,
medical examiners
By 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.
#Post#: 9109--------------------------------------------------
Re: BARREN COUNTY DOE (1989): WF, 2-3, found in a suitcase along
Barren River Lake - 20 August 1989
DIR By: Akoya
Date: September 28, 2020, 11:58 am
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Skaggs Creek
HTML https://i.imgur.com/0lTqGAL.jpg
#Post#: 9110--------------------------------------------------
Re: BARREN COUNTY DOE (1989): WF, 2-3, found in a suitcase along
Barren River Lake - 20 August 1989
DIR By: Akoya
Date: September 28, 2020, 11:59 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/ZWEup6f.gif
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