Greenwood police looking for information on bones found in 1993
GREENWOOD (WISH) – Greenwood police are looking for information in a case involving bones found along I-65 near the Main Street exit more than 20 years ago.
Investigators say children playing in a cornfield behind a subdivision discovered the bones in April, 1993.
It was then a neighbor realized they were human, and police were called to the scene.
Greenwood police worked with University of Indianapolis forensic anthropologist Dr. Stephen Nawrocki and his team to recover the bones.
“When we got there in 1993 in the spring, we had a pretty big job ahead of us,” explained Nawrocki. “Trying to locate where the remains were, and then what had happened, how individual had got there, when the person had most likely died, questions like that.”
“It was a pretty difficult case, and still is. It remains unidentified to this date, after 23 years,” said Nawrocki.
Nawrocki said they believed the remains had been there for at least 18 months, possibly as long as three years, when they were discovered.
“The plowing equipment had dispersed the remains across the field on at least two growing seasons. One of those growing seasons was a deep chisel plowing, which had a tendency to damage the remains and spread them far,” he added.
He said they went out to the scene five times, forming search lines on their hands and knees to recover about 160 bones and bone fragments.
“The remains were broken up sufficiently, and it was difficult to get good estimate on the sex of the individual. Many of the indicating pieces of the skeleton for example, the pelvis… those pieces were missing on this skeleton. We were never able to get a good indication of the sex of person,” said Nawrocki.
At the time, because of the small stature of the person, they believed the bones to be from a female.
Years later, Lt. Eric Klinkowski decided to take a second look at the case.
“Investigators treated this as if it was a homicide from the beginning,” said Klinkowski.
“With a lot of the technology changes that had occurred from 1991 to the present, we thought it deserved a second look,” he said.
“In 1991, 1993, DNA was something they hypothesized would happen in the future, but it wasn’t something they were doing for everything. So when we gave the case a second look, we submitted skeletons for DNA cataloging,” he said. “I remember reading the letter and was just amazed, because it was always believed these remains were a female. That’s because of the small stature of the person, the person was believed to be between 4’11, 5’2, and there was a series of murders in the area at the time, within that five year span of when these remains would have been there, of four to five women that were been killed and dumped into cornfields off of I-65.”
“We were really surprised to find out there was a Y chromosome, and these remains were more than likely male,” he explained.
“It was quite a paradigm shift in the case.”
Klinkowski says this person is believed to be a male, of short stature, had a birth defect with two holes in their sternum, which is often a family trait. They believe he was between 17-30 years old.
“This person deserves to be back with their loved ones. Somebody is missing this person,” said Lt. Eric Klinkowski, with the Greenwood Police Department. “They disappeared sometime in 1991-1993. We don’t know who they are. But we know if we have a family somewhere, we’d like to reunite them.”
If you have any information on this case, you can call the Greenwood Police Department or Crime Stoppers at 317-262-8477 or you can text INDYCS plus your tip to 274637.
