New Technology Could Help Identify Cold Case Bodies
HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP (KDKA) –- A teenager and a baby were found dead in separate locations decades ago in Westmoreland County. They were never identified, and their killers were never brought to justice. But some new technology could help police do both.
Friday, a team of forensic anthropologists and state police began the exhumation process to, hopefully, find out who these two mystery victims are. A backhoe plunged into the soft dirt at the potter's field in Hempfield Township, probing to locate the bodies of a teen girl and an infant buried in the field in the fall of 1967.
"According to the records, both the infant and the teenager were buried in the same grave number, they're given the same grave number in the books," Westmoreland County coroner Ken Bacha said.
The bodies are that of a girl in her teens found at an old garbage dump in Salem Township and that of an infant found in a sewer in Jeannette. This whole exercise is an attempt to find out who they were and how they ended up dead.
"It involves children, so it's important," Trooper Brian Gross said.
Gross spearheaded the effort to find the identities of the two. The infant was certainly murdered, and the teen likely was as well. Mercyhurst Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Dennis Dirkmaat is charged with the task of determining what happened.
"We'll take a look and see if there's any tissues, soft tissues, remaining," Dirkmaat said. "We'll look at all the hard tissues, as well as the bones, and come up with a comprehensive analysis of them."
Discovering just who the teen was and what happened to her is probable. Despite science's progress, finding out who the newborn was, and who killed it, may remain a mystery.
"For a baby, there's no dental records, so you rely on DNA," Dirkmaat said, "and law enforcement would have to have an idea of who it may be for that comparison to come out."
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