A Forensic Investigator describes a decades long saga of murders and the search for the identification of the victims and their killer.
In 1985, a hunter walking in the woods in Allenstown, NH found the decomposing remains of a woman and female child. It appeared that the bodies had fallen out of a nearby 55-gallon drum that was tipped over.
The NH medical examiner’s office had not yet been founded so the bodies were sent to Maine to be autopsied by the Maine medical examiner and forensic anthropologist. The autopsies determined that both were victims of homicide. The victims and their killer remained unidentified.
In 2000, NH State Police reopened the case. A state trooper returned to the area and found another metal barrel, about a football field length away from the first. That barrel held the skeletal remains of 2 small female children, also determined to be homicide victims after examination by NH Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Andrew and Maine Forensic Anthropologist, Dr. Marci Sorg. Dr. Sorg had participated in the examination of the victims found fifteen years earlier.
The barrel is thought to have been there in 1985, but not found at the time.
Kim Fallon learned about this case when she was hired as the chief forensic investigator in 2005. The first case was twenty years old by then. An inventory of the remains showed many missing bones, including one skull. The NH State Police reviewed the case with Ms. Fallon and provided her with two large binders of records documenting the work that had been done over the preceding twenty years.
In 2007, she brought this case to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Although their focus is on children, they agreed to accept the adult woman, due to the circumstances. They used specialized software to do facial reconstructions, created a poster and publicized the case on their website.
The DNA testing that had been done years earlier was for the purpose of comparing the mitochondrial DNA profiles of the victims to the profile of a young girl who went missing in NH in 1984. Once she was ruled out as one of the victims, the DNA testing stopped, but not before the lab had been able to conclude that the woman and two of the children were maternally related.
Over the next several years, Ms. Fallon tracked down the skull and the rest of the missing bones and had specimens shipped back and forth to labs in an effort to develop full nuclear DNA profiles from the degraded bones.
She arranged for isotope testing to be done with the hope that the information gleaned from the testing would give some clues as to where the victims were from.
The case has taken some surprising turns over the years and is moving closer to being 100% solved.
Presentation of the details of this compelling story can be a great addition to your forensic science or criminal justice conference. Contact us through whitemountainforensic.com for details or to arrange an engagement.
