Please keep our families in Florida in pray at this time - hopefully answer will come forth soon. Thanks to all who are on the scene, to include SWFL K9 Team and who have worked very hard to locate more evidence.
Bones Unearth Quiet Fear
By
BRIAN SKOLOFF The Associated Press
FORT MYERS - The discovery of eight human skeletons in a remote,
wooded area just east of downtown has authorities quietly wondering
whether a serial killer might be at work.
Using wire screens and keen eyes, forensics experts are sifting
through dirt and debris for clues. The investigation has taken on
the look of a "CSI" television crime mystery - only it won't be
solved in an hour.
A forensic anthropologist is studying the bones and reconstructing
them like pieces of a puzzle. A botanist and an entomologist will
examine plant growth and insects at the site to determine how long
the remains have been there. And detectives wait for answers.
Who are they? Were they murdered? And if so, is there a mass killer
on the loose?
Theories abound from a shady crematorium dumping bodies to an old
cemetery, but the most obvious, and frightening, is at the forefront
of investigators' minds.
"If it was a body dump by a funeral home, they probably would have
dumped them all in one place, and these are not on top of each
other. They're spread around," said Karen Cooper, supervisor of the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Fort Myers crime lab. "I
think we're more likely dealing with a serial killer or something of
that nature ... That's what's on the top of people's minds."
The skeletons were found down a dirt road in an area covered in
scrub and brush in an industrial section just a few miles from
downtown and several miles from Interstate 75.
The first was found March 23 by a surveyor checking the land for
potential development. Authorities were called, and seven other
skeletons were discovered in a 200-yard radius.
No clothing or personal items were found; no flesh remained, just
bones.
The bodies, believed to be adults, were not buried, but appear to
have been placed on the ground. Cooper said the bones also appear to
have been chewed by animals.
Investigators with the Fort Myers Police Department are keeping
mostly mum so not to scare residents of this town known as a warm-
weather haven for retirees and spring-breakers.
Heather Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist from Florida Gulf
Coast University, has been on the crime scene sifting through dirt
for evidence and bones, and is helping to reconstruct the bodies to
determine age, gender, race and cause of death.
Investigators are looking for nicks and cuts on the bones that could
have been made by a knife or a bullet.
Walsh-Haney said a cause of death will be difficult to determine
absent any tissue or internal organs, and it's unclear how long the
bones have been there.
"In Florida, because of the humid environment, you can get to a
skeleton within a few weeks," she said.
Experts say it's not uncommon for a serial killer to dump victims on
the same site or within the same type of terrain.
Daniel Conahan was sentenced to death in 1999 for the strangulation
murder of a homeless man whose body was found in a swampy, wooded
area north of Fort Myers. Conahan also is suspected in a string of
other deaths - dubbed the Hog Trail Murders because of the wooded
locations where the bodies were found in Charlotte County in the mid-
1990s. Those cases remain unsolved.
Local authorities would not speculate on whether they suspect the
skeletons may be connected to Conahan, but Cooper said there's
always a possibility.
John Douglas, a former FBI profiler and expert on serial killers,
said the absence of clothing and personal affects with the skeletons
leads him to believe it's most likely a "serial murderer graveyard."
Monica Caison
CUE Center for Missing Persons
PO Box 12714
Wilmington, NC 28405
(910) 343-1131
(910) 232-1687 24 Hour Line
Email: cuecenter@aol.com
Website:
http://www.ncmissingpersons.org/
