Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist

9. Precious Doe

Precious Doe BI Agent Sue Stiltner arrived at my office one day in 2002. She was in Baton Rouge to consult on an FBI case and asked David Smith, a detective with the East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's office, if he knew me. He told her that he did and that he would arrange for her to meet me. When she got to the FACES Lab, she told me she had heard a lot about our lab and the work that we do. She wasespecially interested in our research on three-dimensional facial reconstruction and our studies on tissue depth thicknesses in living persons. I explained that research project to her, how we had gathered considerable tissue depth data using noninvasive ultrasound on both sexes, various races, and a wide range of ages. Sue wanted to hear more about our work with children , and I told her that we had scanned more than eight hundred volunteers ranging in age from three to ninety-seven. "So, where is this going, Sue?" I asked her, knowing full well that she would not be wasting her valuabletime just chitchatting in my lab, as interesting as I thought it might be. "Mary," she said, "Kansas City, Missouri, is one of the regions in my jurisdiction. Have you heard of the Precious Doe case up there?" Actually , I had. It was a case that had stayed in the national headlines for several days back in the spring of 2002.1 remembered it, but I asked her to refresh my memory. A sheriff's deputy was walking along a small dirt road in a wooded region in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri. He was looking for a missing man. He noticed an area very near the edge of the road where flies were circling all about. He knew immediately that something was dead. What F 9 78 T R A I L OF BONES he was not prepared for was the sight of a small child's body, definitely female, lying near the edge of the road. She had no head. He immediately called the police. Crime scene personnel reached the scene in record time. The detectives and volunteers continued looking in the general area, hoping to find the child's head. They were not successful.The next day, an older black male announced to passersby that he was going into the woods to look for the head. No one would have dreamed that he could find it. A television reporter just happened to be in the immediate area doing a follow-up story on the little girl and captured the man picking up a plastic bag that was alive with flies. It seemed a strange coincidence that the man just happened to want to look for the little girl's head and then found it so easily. After checking out his background, law enforcement personnel eliminated him as a suspect, but the city was in an uproar. Everyone was upset because no one could identify the child. How could they solve the case if they did not know who she was? The entire community came forward to try to help identify the child. Somewhere along the way, they began to call the small victim "Precious Doe" rather than Jane Doe, the moniker typically assigned to unidentified females. "Precious Doe" made the case seem more personal and seemed more fitting for a child. The autopsy performed by the chief medical examiner in Missouri confirmed that the body was that of a black female, exact age unknown, but most likely between three and seven years old. The autopsy report also noted that she had been dead for only a day or so when found. However , because of the rapid decay of her soft tissue in the heat, due in part to her size, her face was unrecognizable. A two-dimensional line drawing was completed and publicized nationwide . Then another. No results. Next, authorities decided to try a three-dimensional facial reconstruction. They sent the skull to aforensic sculptor in Pennsylvania and publicized the results. No luck again. Hundreds of phone calls had not provided any real leads. Who was this child? Didn't anyone know her? Did someone have a little girl and then suddenly not have her anymore?Did the mother or father claim she was "visiting relatives" in a distant state? Precious Doe 79 The poignant case history was what troubled...