Authorities Seek Public’s Help with 1968 Homicide
On Friday September 13, the Will County Coroner’s Office, Cold Case Unit, along with the Will County Sheriff’s Police, exhumed the remains of a 1968 Cold Case Homicide.
On September 30, 1968, a highway department worker while on assignment on 155 near Blodgett Road in unincorporated Will County found the deceased remains of a female body located in that area covered by brush from a nearby tree.
There was no identification, clothing or jewelry found on or near the remains. The unidentified female was measured at 5’5″ and weighed 135 lbs., with straight, collar-length hair, with color ranges from red to medium brown, with some greying roots and that the hair was possibly dyed.
The female had brown eyes and had a left ear that was darker than the rest of the body. Both female’s ear lobes had been pierced. An autopsy performed indicated that the female had been strangled and sustained blunt force trauma to the head.
Fingerprints were obtained by police at the autopsy and failed to lead to the identity of the female. DNA analysis was not available in 1968, and a blood sample was tested and indicated that the female had type O and had indications of possible prior Toxoplasmosis.
The case went cold, and the decedent was buried in an unmarked grave in a local cemetery in Will County. In 2009, the remains were exhumed to obtain a DNA sample and sent to the University of North Texas and later to the Smithsonian Institute Paleontology section. It was determined that the female may have been Native American. Further studies in 2017 by Dr. Cris Hughes of the University of Illinois Forensic Anthropology Department indicated Asian ancestry as well as Native American.
In 2008, then-Will County Coroner Patrick K. O’Neil created a part-time cold case unit consisting of two retired police investigators, Eugene Sullivan a retired Romeoville Investigator and James Cardin a retired Will County Sheriff’s Police Investigator.
This unit, along with investigators with the Will County Sheriff’s Police, had investigated leads in this case. In 2020, newly elected Coroner Laurie H. Summers approved additional funding for cold case investigations, making it her priority to utilize new emerging technologies along with traditional investigative techniques.
The current Cold Case investigators are Joseph Piper and William Sheehan, both retired Lockport Illinois Investigators, submission of a portion of the victim’s skeletal remains were sent to Othram Inc., a Forensic Genetic Genealogy company in the Woodlands, Texas, to obtain DNA analysis and a possible genealogy match.
The funding for this Forensic Investigation has been funded by NAMUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Through the Department of Justice. Othram has been successfully used in identifying four Will County Coroner Cold Cases since 2022.
Summers would like to thank Matt Baskerville of the Baskerville Funeral Home in Wilmington and the staff of Oakwood Cemetery in Wilmington and the University of Illinois Forensic Anthropology Department for their assistance in the exhumation of the remains.