By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Detectives today are working on a new lead in their attempts to solve the mystery of the skeletal remains found near Morton this past spring.
They are checking into a missing person from Pierce County, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office said today.
A motorist who pulled off U.S. Highway 12 near Morton to take a break discovered the remains off the side of a logging road on April 7.
An examination by a specialist at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded they belonged to a younger adult female of small stature, according to the sheriff’s office.
However, a cause of death could not be determined, according to Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown.
It’s unknown who she is, but three missing females whose cases have been highly publicized have been ruled out; Kayla Croft-Payne of Lewis County, Nancy Moyer from Tenino and Lindsey Baum of McCleary, Brown said.
The sheriff’s office has released little information about the find, but have said it was doubtful the remains had been where they were found for very long, because it was a well-used logging road.
The sheriff’s office won’t say what they were told by the expert for an estimate of how long ago the person had died.
The sheriff’s detective sergeant last night was doing some research and came up with a new possibility out of Pierce County, Brown said today.
There are similarities, such as the “time frames and some of the things we found,” Brown said.
Dental records do exist for the missing Pierce County person, so they can be checked against the teeth belonging to the dead woman, according to Brown.
Dental records and DNA from the deceased have been entered into databases.
Just yesterday, Brown said no matches had been found and they really had no idea who she could be.
“We ran the information through systems we can run through that does automatic checks, with no results,” she said yesterday.
That left the sheriff’s office thinking the deceased was likely to be someone who hadn’t been in trouble previously (in order for their DNA to be taken such as in a criminal case) and may have never been reported missing, she said.
At this point, detectives are relying on “hand checks” for example when asked by another agency, according to Brown.
However, detective Sgt. Dusty Breen was up late last night and came upon this new potential missing person. It will likely take days to compare the dental work, Brown said.
Still missing:
Nancy Moyer, 36, was last seen by a co-worker on March 6, 2009. The 5-foot tall mother of two was reported missing when her husband returned their children to her Tenino home two days later. She was not there, but her purse and vehicle were.
Lindsey Baum, 10, was last seen June 26, 2009, when she left a friend’s house in McCleary to walk home. The walk should have taken 10 minutes, but she never arrived home.
Kayla Croft-Payne was 18 and living outside Chehalis on April 28, 2010 when she last logged onto her MySpace internet account. She was reported missing on May 5 by a friend who hadn’t seen or heard from her for several days.
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