By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Authorities are a little bit closer to possibly discovering the identity of the female whose skeletal remains were found last week on a wooded hillside in Chehalis.
If it is who they think it might be, it’s not someone who has been reported missing, according to police and the coroner.
The human remains were found by a surveyor about a quarter mile east of the 2200 block of Northeast Kresky Avenue.
Northeast Kresky Avenue
Chehalis Police Department detective Sgt. Gary Wilson estimated she had been dead around a year, based partly on items they found close by. Receipts and other papers in a bag – like a handbag – near her had a name on them, according to Wilson.
Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod’s office has the ability to send an inquiry fax out to all dentists in Lewis County, and he got a response, he said this morning.
Both the remains and what he believes to be her dental records are being transported today to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, where the forensic anthropologist can compare the two, McLeod said.
He could get an answer as to whether they match within days, he said.
Finding a cause of death is something that will take much longer, if they even can figure it out, according to McLeod.
Dr. Kathleen Taylor, the forensic anthropologist, can examine bones and sometimes find some answers, for example she might find trauma to a skull or knife of bullet marks to ribs, McLeod said.
“But there’s only so much we can do scientifically,” McLeod said.
His office is still trying to track down possible family of the female whose name they have, he said.
Sgt. Wilson said he had nothing new to release about the case, and is reluctant to share many details.
“It’s difficult, because you have family out there, people who do have missing persons, and I don’t want them to get false hopes,” he said. “At the same time, I want to protect the family of who it is.”
Wilson said one of his detectives has been conducting interviews, but his office is in somewhat of a holding pattern, waiting for the coroner to make a positive identification.
Everything they collected at the scene last Tuesday, they turned over to the coroner, he said.
There were no indications of foul play at the scene, but there were also no indications at all there to suggest how she died, Wilson said this morning.
The area is above a swath of property where some earthmoving and cleanup is underway, a hike through woods and steep terrain.
Wilson said he could only speculate why the female would have been in that spot.
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For background, read “Human remains recovered off Kresky Avenue hillside” from Tuesday February 24, 2015, here
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