Do you know these men?
All three were found dead in Richmond under suspicious circumstances over a period of years and have never been identified.
They are among 220 sets of remains that Virginia’s chief medical examiner hopes to put names to in an initiative seeking the public’s help.
“We have skeletal remains that go back to 1960s still archived in our offices, waiting for somebody to come forward and to be able to identify these folks and return them to their loved ones,” said Dr. Leah Bush, the chief medical examiner.
In many cases, Bush said, the problem is that only partial remains were recovered.
“If we’re lucky, they might only be missing bones of the hands and feet, which generally don’t have much use for identification purposes,” Bush said.
The skull, on the other hand, is critical, used to guess a person’s race, sex and age.
“Long bones are used to estimate height. So if we are missing critical parts of the skeleton, it’s very limited in what we can tell the public.”
In the three cases unveiled Monday, skulls were available and were used by the FBI’s Forensic Anthropology Program in Quantico to make busts to approximate what the men looked like. Bush said the FBI is not charging them for the busts.
Details on the unidentified Richmond men include:
- A middle-aged black male, approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall. Police found the remains on Oct. 23, 1995, on an urban farm in the 4200 block of Angus Road.
- A black male, over age 50, 5 feet 5 inches tall or taller, wearing size 12 oxford shoes. Police found the remains on Sept. 26, 2000, in a wooded area across from the DuPont plant at 5300 Commerce Road.
- A black male, between 24 and 30 years old, 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall. Police found the remains on July 3, 2004, on Brown’s Island near the Manchester Bridge
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“These are police department cases, so we will be working directly with them should any identification be made and any follow-up needed,” said Rochelle Altholz, state administrator for the chief medical examiner’s office.
About one in three cases turns out to be a homicide, Bush said.
“Up until now, we’ve had skeletal remains only. To put a name with the face would be huge,” said Douglas L. Barton, a Richmond police detective in the major crimes unit.
The medical examiner last year released facial approximations of three unidentified people whose remains were found in the Tidewater area.
Family came forward to help identify one of the three and, with help of newer DNA tests, he was identified as Andre Macklin, whose cause of death remains undetermined.
“We had a family member call and say the individual looked like their loved one, and put forth the name Andre Macklin,” Bush said. “Mr. Macklin had been an individual who we thought might match the skeletal remains we had. But we had no way to formally identify Mr. Macklin.”
The family had provided a photograph, but in it Macklin’s smile wasn’t wide enough for the medical examiners to see his distinctive front teeth.
“We actually tried to get DNA from Mr. Macklin’s skeleton years ago, but with the old DNA testing they weren’t able to get a usable profile. Mr. Macklin’s body stayed in our office from 1996 until just last year, when we were able to — with new information from the family get DNA — use this new technology. … Mr. Macklin’s DNA was matched back to a sister and to his father. The family now has closure in that case.”
Bush said DNA, because it’s costly and time-consuming, is always the last resort.
“We always try to do all the easy things first, fingerprints, dental, X-rays. And then, when all else fails, we will go and use DNA,” Bush said.
Altholz said it was also critical that people — families and local law enforcement authorities — put information on missing persons and unidentified remains into the database for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Bush said facial approximations on unidentified persons in other regions of the state are forthcoming.
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