McCORDSVILLE — Skeletal remains found five months ago in a wooded area in McCordsville have been identified as those of a woman who had been missing for more than two years, police said Monday.
Patricia Depasquale, 57, McCordsville, was positively identified through dental records, said Aaron Watts, a detective with the McCordsville Police Department. Police don’t know how long her body had been in the wooded area in the 6500 block of County Road 900N when it was found by a mushroom hunter on April 27.
The cause of death is still a mystery. The condition of the remains made it difficult to determine exactly how Depasquale died, the Hancock County coroner’s office said. However, foul play is not suspected.
No one from Depasquale’s family filed any kind of official police report indicating she was missing and could not be found. But police determined the woman had been missing since 2017
“No, no one from the family filed anything with us about her missing,” Watts said.
The investigation is ongoing, Watts said. Indiana State Police are examining some of the items recovered at the scene, which could take up to another six months to analyze, he said.
“We’re just waiting on some evidence to be processed,” Watts said. “Depending on what comes back from that, it could end the investigation or continue it.”
Depasquale’s remains were handed over to a team led by Dr. Krista Latham, director of the University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center, which began examining them. Because of the condition of the remains, authorities concluded they had been in the wooded area about a mile east of 86th Street and Carroll Road for an extended period.
