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#Post#: 1223--------------------------------------------------
WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in chimney in Belling
ham, WA - Sept 20, 1987
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:05 am
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A Georgia-Pacific West Inc. worker found the decedent's crumpled
skeletal remains atop parallel pipes near the bottom inside
chimney No. 9. The pipes, which carried water heated by boiler
exhaust, were 240 degrees. The air was 95 degrees, unless the
boiler was running, when temperatures reached 370.
#Post#: 1224--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:05 am
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Date of Discovery: September 20, 1987
Location of Discovery: Whatcom County, Washington
Estimated Date of Death: January to September 1987
State of Remains: Charred/skeletal
Cause of Death: Unknown
Physical Description
Estimated Age: 27-37 years old
Race: White
Sex: Male
Height: 5'8" to 5'9"
Weight: 130 to 155 lbs.
Hair Color: Unknown
Eye Color: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: He had small feet, probably
wearing a size 8 shoe.
Identifiers
Dentals: Available. Dental work included silver and gold
fillings and possibly a root canal. It was not indigent dental
work but was good quality care for the time frame.
Fingerprints: Not available.
DNA: Not available. The chimney heat destroyed DNA.
Clothing & Personal Items
Clothing: Charred remnants of denim pants and a denim jacket, a
lightweight shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. The coat was found
under the body, apparently to shield him from the heat. The
shirt was draped or wrapped around one ankle, possibly to bind
an injury.
Jewelry: Unknown.
Additional Personal Items: Burnt remnant of a Continental
Airlines ticket or baggage claim, but could not make out the
numbers to trace the ticket.
Circumstances of Discovery
A Georgia-Pacific West Inc. worker found the decedent's crumpled
skeletal remains atop parallel pipes near the bottom inside
chimney No. 9. The pipes, which carried water heated by boiler
exhaust, were 240 degrees. The air was 95 degrees, unless the
boiler was running, when temperatures reached 370.
Officials estimated the victim had been in the chimney a few
days to a few weeks. Records showed the boiler operated for 34
hours during September 17 and September 18, two days before the
body was found, plus more hours the previous month.
The chimney was difficult to reach. The person had to climb a
number of stairs inside the plant, and then make his way to the
roof of the building. Although a metal door was present at the
base of the stack, it took police two hours to pry it open,
making it an unfeasible way for the decedent to have gotten in.
A medical examination yielded the presence of broken bones,
indicating the body probably fell into the stack. The unusual
location of the body fueled speculation that the discovery was
that of a murder or suicide victim. Nothing was located to
indicate he was a worker, and no workers were reported missing
nor any abandoned vehicles located.
Investigating Agency(s)
Agency Name: Bellingham Police Department
Agency Contact Person: Detective Allan L. Jensen
Agency Phone Number: 360-778-8609 or 360-778-8700
Agency E-Mail: ajen(at)cob.org
Agency Case Number: 87B-24528
NCIC Case Number: U270367134
NamUs Case Number: Not listed
#Post#: 1225--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:05 am
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HTML https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article173627656.html
After 30 years, the mystery of the G-P smokestack skeleton
continues
Sept. 20, 1987, was a pleasant Sunday in Bellingham, with a
light breeze and temperatures in the 70s.
About 5:21 that morning, Roy Harris, an employee at
Georgia-Pacific’s waterfront mill, checked into a smoke alarm
for the No. 9 boiler at the mill’s steam plant.
The boiler was one of 10 at the steam plant, with pipes running
through its heat-release stack to preheat steam for use in the
pulp-and-tissue mill. The boiler was used only occasionally and
so wasn’t checked often. A smoke alarm usually meant a steam
pipe was leaking.
Harris went to investigate. He climbed to the top of the No. 9
stack, where a four-foot-wide lid was usually left open, and
peered inside the 10-foot-square steel structure.
What he saw revealed a mystery that remains unsolved three
decades later.
Looking down, Harris saw human remains, described later in an
autopsy report as “partially skeletalized, extensively
carbonized,” on a grid of 11 parallel pipes about 17 feet below.
Articles of clothing under the body suggested the person tried
to use them to seek relief from the heat and injuries. The
victim may have tried to climb to safety.
Harris called plant supervisors and Bellingham police. Officers,
in turn, contacted Whatcom County’s deputy medical examiner, Dr.
Robert Gibb, who was on Sucia Island.
“It was not one of my favorite afternoons,” Gibb later recalled.
Nothing seemed to fit. Nothing about this ever made sense.
Al Jensen, a detective who worked on the case before he retired
from the Bellingham Police Department in 2015
Over the years, Bellingham police contacted law agencies across
the country and Canada in an effort to identity the victim. Two
sets of forensic drawings, based on the skull and intended to
suggest what the person might have looked like, were sent to
police and media. The victim had dental work, but no matching
dental records were found in missing-person files elsewhere.
beyond the person’s identity, questions remain about how and why
someone would end up, in the words of G-P spokesman Orman Darby,
in such a “terribly inaccessible” place.
Theories abound, from suicide to environmental protest, from an
accident to a crime.
“Nothing seemed to fit,” said Al Jensen, a detective who worked
on the case before he retired from the Bellingham Police
Department in 2015. “Nothing about this ever made sense.”
The setting
Georgia-Pacific acquired the waterfront mill in 1963 and
operated it until the mill closed in 2001. The Port of
Bellingham bought the property in 2005; since then, most of the
mill’s structures have been demolished to make way for
development.
The four-story brick steam plant, also known as the boiler
house, was built in 1938 with two boilers. Eight more boilers
were added in later expansions. The plant burned wood waste,
oil, diesel and natural gas to make steam to power mill
operations and to heat offices and labs.
When in use, the stack was a lethal place. The ambient
temperature was 95 degrees, but reached 370 degrees when the
boiler was fired. The pipes carried 240-degree water.
The boiler was fired intermittently in the months before the
skeleton’s discovery, including for 34 hours over Sept. 17-18, a
few days before the skeleton was found.
Police estimated the victim had been inside the boiler stack for
several days to several weeks. Officers could not find a
comparable situation to provide a firm benchmark for determining
how long the victim had been exposed to high temperatures.
In addition to the opening at the top of the stack, the interior
could be accessed through a steel hatch just above where the
body landed. Police concluded the victim entered from the top,
because the nuts on the hatch bolts were rusty (it took police
nearly two hours to open the hatch) and the hatch could not be
secured from the inside.
Reaching the top entry to the stack wasn’t easy. To a layperson,
the stack didn’t resemble a chimney; instead of a tall cylinder,
it was a squat steel box nestled close to a brick wall and
support structures.
It would have been easy for someone to get in there and climb on
the roof.
Howard McDowell, G-P’s tissue mill manager when the skeleton was
discovered
To reach the stack, a person had to climb three flights of metal
stairs, or ride a vertical conveyor belt inside the steam plant,
to reach the roof. From there, there were several routes to the
top of the stack. A person could use a ladder from a catwalk by
the base of the stack, or scramble up using pipes or other
handholds.
A less obvious route was to jump from a nearby roof onto the
corrugated metal roof of a small structure next to the top of
the stack. An outdoor ladder encased in a protective metal cage
went past the small structure, so a person could have hung onto
the outside of the cage and leaped to the top of the No. 9
stack.
Generally, four to six employees worked in the steam plant at a
time. It was often noisy, and the employees sometimes worked
inside enclosed offices.
“It would have been easy for someone to get in there and climb
on the roof,” recalled Howard McDowell, G-P’s tissue mill
manager when the skeleton was discovered.
Security at the mill was beefed up in advance of the first Earth
Day, in 1970, but unauthorized people could still gain access to
the property without much problem. There was no secure fencing
along railroad tracks into the mill, and while guards patrolled
the property around the clock, security cameras weren’t a common
feature in the 1980s, said Don Wines, manager of chemical
operations at the mill.
If people could sneak into the mill, stack No. 9 itself remained
hard to find. An early police report made that clear with a
comment by Don Bailey, superintendent of the steam plant: “Mr.
Bailey advised that if someone had dumped a body in No. 9, it
would be a good place. He said you would have a better chance on
winning the lottery than having someone look down Stack No. 9.”
The setting for the mystery is gone. The steam plant was
demolished in 2011.
The victim
According to the autopsy and police, the victim was likely a man
of slight stature, about 25 to 35 years old. He was 5 feet 8
inches to 5 feet 9 inches tall, and weighed 130 to 155 pounds.
He’d had decent dental work, with evidence of a root canal and
gold and porcelain fillings.
He had numerous fractures, including both thigh bones, several
lower-leg bones and two bones in his right arm, that could have
resulted from the fall, heat stress, or, maybe, an assault.
The use of DNA testing wasn’t common practice for Bellingham
police in the 1980s, and the stack’s heat prevented DNA analysis
later.
The victim wore a lightweight shirt, jeans, a denim-like jacket,
and about size-8 sneakers, not hard-toe shoes that workers often
wear. It appeared the victim tried to remove his pants, the
jacket was found underneath the body, and the shirt was wrapped
around a leg, all perhaps to buffer the heat and to bind
injuries. The victim had put his socks on his hands, and marks
on the inside wall suggest he tried to climb to freedom.
The body’s charred condition made it impossible to test for
drugs or alcohol. The use of DNA testing wasn’t common practice
for Bellingham police in the 1980s, and the stack’s heat
prevented DNA analysis later. Temperatures inside the stack
could reach 370 degrees, the range at which DNA degrades.
The victim had no wallet, checks, keys, watch, work helmet or
work belt. A welder’s sparking tool was found at the base of the
stack, below the skeleton, but workers had been inside the stack
several years earlier and there was no proof the tool belonged
to the victim.
Police did find a charred, partially readable piece of a
perforated Continental airline ticket or baggage claim. The
ticket had six numbers, not enough to identify the buyer, ticket
seller or itinerary.
In 2006, a news story raised the question of whether the victim
might have been female. Richard Severson, a steam engineer at
Western Washington University, told The Bellingham Herald that
he had given a woman a tour of Western’s steam plant in late
summer 1987.
He described the white woman as wiry, in her mid-30s to mid-40s,
and perhaps 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6 inches. She had light to
medium-brown short hair and was wearing a lined windbreaker,
woven blouse, jeans and tennis shoes.
During the tour, they came to a small boiler that was operating
and the woman asked if she could go inside. When Severson guided
her to an inactive boiler, she climbed inside, sat on some
pipes, then exited and re-entered several more times.
Severson asked the strange-acting woman to leave, and mentioned
that G-P had boilers, assuming the mill was protected from
intruders. A few weeks later, he read news reports about the
discovery of the skeleton.
Was the woman the person found inside the stack? Pelvis
measurements are a standard way to distinguish female from male
skeletons, although there is some margin for error. Police
remained confident the victim was a male, with Gibb noting that
no female reproductive organs were found among the carbonized
remains.
The search
Unidentified human remains are a recurring phenomenon in the
United States, with the number dwindling as the science and
technology of forensics improves. Whatcom County has three
unidentified sets of remains.
The initial effort to identify the G-P skeleton focused on the
mill and its workforce. Coordinating with Georgia-Pacific,
police quickly decided the victim was not a mill employee or a
contract worker. No workers were missing, no paychecks were
unclaimed and no vehicles were found abandoned nearby.
A few months after the skeleton was found, police released a
forensic sketch of what the victim might have looked like. The
drawing by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Identification portrayed
a shaggy-haired man with a long face and sunken cheeks.
The drawing and autopsy results were sent to law agencies in
numerous states, but no match with a missing person was found.
Bellingham police worked the case until 1993, then set it aside.
Six years later, Bellingham Detective Al Jensen reopened the
investigation after a police department employee training to
become a forensic artist sketched a second image of the victim,
one that showed a short-haired man with a more bulbous nose,
narrower mouth and fuller cheeks.
Jensen sent the new image to law agencies to see if it resembled
a person reported missing a year before to a year after the G-P
skeleton was found. When that didn’t produce results, he
broadened the inquiry to include people reported missing up to
three years before or after.
A possible match involved a man missing from Vancouver, B.C.,
but no proof was found the man had crossed the border into
Washington, and the absence of DNA, fingerprints or dental
records made a conclusive match impossible.
All along, police pondered explanations for why a person would
end up inside the stack:
Protest: Police checked with environmental groups in case the
victim had been protesting or measuring pollution at the mill.
None of the groups reported anyone missing, and G-P officials
said other parts of the mill offered smarter and safer settings
to look for pollutants.
Suicide: While suicide remains a possibility, there are more
accessible places and less gruesome ways to end one’s life.
Evidence suggesting the person tried to climb out of the stack
weighs against the notion of suicide, although that could have
been a late change of heart.
Crime: The stack seemed a good place to dispose of a victim, and
the absence of identification fits the image of a crime, but
there was no evidence that one or more assailants accompanied
the victim to the boiler stack.
Prank gone bad: Another possible explanation came to the
attention of police after a 2006 Bellingham Herald story about
the case. A former employee of Mt. Baker Plywood told Detective
Jensen that he had chatted with someone who was visiting the
Bellingham plant in 1987, after the skeleton had been
discovered.
The visitor mentioned that he and some friends would enter G-P
and climb towers for fun. The visitor said a member of the group
worked at G-P and helped them gain access to the mill after
hours.
If a climber feared detection, he would blow a whistle and they
would meet at a pre-arranged place. The visitor said a newer
member of the group was a man from New York, and on a recent
outing the New Yorker did not show up at the pre-arranged
location.
Jensen contacted state police in New York and received
information on five missing persons who might be a match. But
none of the five files had dental records. Police could not
locate the man who told the story while visiting the plywood
mill.
2004 Bellingham police again closed their investigation,
deciding that all leads had been exhausted and the victim’s
identity could not be determined.
In August 2004, Bellingham police again closed their
investigation, deciding that all leads had been exhausted and
the victim’s identity could not be determined. The skeletal
remains were to be cremated or buried.
Generally in Whatcom County, indigents’ remains are cremated and
the urns are stored in a common vault at Greenacres Memorial
Park. When enough urns are in storage, after perhaps 20 years, a
cluster of urns is buried together in one gravesite.
Rules about privacy prevented a spokesman at Greenacres from
talking specifically about the remains of the G-P victim. So,
fittingly, details about the final resting place remain a
mystery.
The case of the G-P skeleton remains a tragic mystery.
“Whoever this person was, they have family somewhere,” Jensen
said. “Somebody had to miss this person.”
#Post#: 1226--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:06 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/rl0URBZl.jpg
A forensic drawing and a photo of the skull of the unidentified
body found at the steam plant at the Georgia-Pacific paper mill
in Bellingham on Sept. 20, 1987. Bellingham Police Department
#Post#: 1227--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:06 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/HJPc4a0l.jpg
A forensic drawing, made in 1987 by the Oklahoma State Bureau of
Identification, shows what a man whose charred remains at the
steam plant at the Georgia-Pacific mill that year may have
looked like. Bellingham Police Department
#Post#: 1228--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:06 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/AxOwagUl.jpg
A forensic drawing, made in 2000, shows what a man whose charred
remains were at the steam plant at the Georgia-Pacific mill in
1987 may have looked like. It was drawn by a Bellingham Police
Department employee training to become a forensic artist.
Bellingham Police Department
#Post#: 1229--------------------------------------------------
Re: WHATCOM COUNTY JOHN DOE: WM, 27-37 - Found in Georgia-Pacifi
c chimney in Bellingham, WA - Sept 2
By: Scorpio Date: February 10, 2020, 3:06 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/Bd3lXz8l.jpg
The steam plant building at the Georgia-Pacific waterfront mill
site, photographed in 2008, was demolished in 2011 after the
waterfront tissue mill was closed in 2007. In 1987, the skeletal
remains of a still-unidentified person were found in the chimney
there, which was in the squat steel box nestled close to a brick
wall and support structures. Tore Ofteness
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