McCORDSVILLE — Local and state officials are hard at work trying to solve the mystery of whose skeletal remains were lying in a wooded area until a mushroom hunter stumbled across them on Saturday.
Right now, investigators have many more questions than answers. They don’t know how long the bones had been there. They don’t know the person’s gender. They don’t know how he or she got there. And they don’t know how the person died.
Most important of all, they have no idea yet about the person’s identity.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThe full skeletal remains, which appear to have been in the woods for an extended period of time, have been excavated and are now under study in Indianapolis, officials said.
Officials from the Hancock County coroners office, whose job is to determine the cause of death, turned the care of the remains over to a team of forensic specialists from the University of Indianapolis Sunday afternoon.
The team, led by Dr. Krista Latham, a forensic anthropologist, could take several weeks or even months to piece the puzzle together.
“It’s going to be a painstaking process, because the answers are more than likely going to come from science now,” assistant coroner Dave Carver said.
The adult remains were found in a wooded area in the 6000 block of County Road 900N on Saturday. The work to remove them came a day after officials from the McCordsville Police Department, Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, county coroner’s office and prosecutors office were alerted to the discovery about a mile east of 86th Street and Carroll Road.
A skeletal examination, described to Carver by forensic officials, is what will happen now. The work will include a search for any kind of skeletal damage. The forensic team will be looking for things like bullet holes, fractures or other suggestions of violence.
In determining the cause, the coroner’s office will use all the resources medical science can provide. Forensic pathology, toxicology and anthropology (as in this case) are the most commonly used resources, Carver said.
“Once we have the conclusion, we collaborate with the investigative agency,” Carver said. “That collaboration often determines how they will conduct their investigation.”
The McCordsville Police Department is approaching the case as a criminal investigation until that aspect is eliminated, said Aaron Watts, lead detective.
His office has been inundated with calls and emails from people looking for answers about missing relatives and friends, hoping and praying the bones in the woods could lead to any kind of new information.
“Unfortunately, right now we just don’t have any answers,” Watts said.
While Watts could not recall any people in the county who have been reported missing, social media lit up with speculation in the hours after the discovery.
Police are taking the calls seriously, Watts said. But, they’re at a point where they’re going to have to wait until they get further information from the forensic team before they can start to figure out who the person is and how the bones got there.
A man hunting for mushrooms found the remains on Saturday afternoon an estimated 60 yards off of County Road 900 North near the edge of a wooded area surrounded by farmland.
