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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (July 27, 2016)
A8 Region Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, July 27, 2016 Riverbank skeleton an unsolved mystery 4,000 new unidentified remains are found every year in the U.S. By Natalie St. John EO Media Group Wearing Levi’s, a red but- ton-down shirt, gaiters and hik- ing boots, the skeleton recently found on the bank of the Co- lumbia River looked like it was dressed for a hike. By the time a boater discov- ered him in late May a remote area near Pillar Rock, about 27 river miles upstream from the Paciic, the unidentiied man’s only possessions were a 1999 penny and a lens cloth in his jeans pocket. But he still had his teeth, complete with good-quality, modern dental work. To Wahkiakum County Cor- oner Dan Bigelow, it seemed like a decent starting point for an investigation. But two months later, he is still trying to ind the man’s name. While his list of possible identities for the middle-aged man keeps grow- ing, his list of promising leads has dwindled to practically nothing. “Just about anybody who disappeared anywhere in the Columbia River basin could credibly be this person,” Bige- low said in early July. Despite these setbacks, Bi- gelow is still trying to ind out who the man was, and how he ended up in Wahkiakum Coun- ty. He recently delivered the remains to the state’s only cer- tiied forensic anthropologist, and he is taking a closer look at missing persons cases from across the Northwest and be- yond. “It’s a hell of a shame,” Bi- gelow said. “I can’t help think- ing there is somebody out there looking for this guy.” Bones on river banks The source of so much life, the Columbia’s deep waters and swift currents are also im- plicated in a lot of deaths. Ac- cording to an ongoing Orego- nian analysis, at least 36 people have drowned in the Columbia since August 2006. The river also inevitably tempts individuals faced with the pressing dilemma of where to dispose of a body. In Sep- tember 2006, a couple found a large bag loating in the river near Portland. It contained the dismembered remains of Doug Adamson, 52. In August 2012, Grant County, Washington, deputies recovered 75-year-old Toshio Ota, a missing Seattle man. He was the victim of a homicide by blunt-force trau- U.S. Coast Guard/ Petty Officer 1st Class Levi Read This March 21 file photo shows the Columbia River near Cathlamet, Washington, near Pillar Rock where an unidentified skeleton was recently found. ma. In January 2015, boaters discovered the body of Jessica Newton, 40, on Bachelor Island near Ridgeield. She too had died a violent death. Bigelow knows all about the misfortune that can wash in with the tide. In 1998 — well before he was elected — a local found a dead woman on a small island in the river. To his regret, no one has ever been able to identify her. “I am going to keep it un- til I can hand [the remains] to her next of kin and they can give them a respectful buri- al. There’s someone out there who’s missing that person,” Bigelow said. But he acknowl- edged that he has exhausted all of his ideas for inding her identity. “I can’t think of a single thing I can do to contribute to that investigation,” he said. In 2013, a beachcomber discovered an accumulation of bones strewn along the river- bank. Some of them appeared to be human, including a par- tial skull with the upper row of teeth still intact. Bigelow sent the bones to Washington State forensic an- thropologist Kathy Taylor, who determined which were human, and sent them on to the foren- sic laboratory at University of North Texas. Experts there ex- tracted DNA from the bones, and entered the results into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of DNA records. Nearly two years after the discovery, Bigelow and Taylor had an answer: The bones be- longed to 44-year-old Molly Newton-Waddington, a be- loved but troubled Kelso moth- er and wife who was last seen in Kelso on March 14, 2012. Kelso police continue to in- vestigate Waddington’s death, which they consider suspicious. ‘That was when I realized the heartbreak’ Coroner duties constitute a relatively small part of Bige- low’s workload, but he takes them seriously. By carefully examining the latest remains, he found a few clues: The man spent at least a little time in western Washington, died after spring 2013, and had probably been dead for about two years. He was probably middle-class, and middle-aged. He probably died elsewhere, and his body then traveled up or down the river with the currents and tides. Bigelow sent a detailed press release to media outlets and asked the public for tips, just as he had done in 2013. “With Molly Waddington,” Bigelow recalled, “all we had was a skull. We didn’t know height, weight, gender, prac- tically nothing. When I asked for assistance, the world called me. Everybody who was miss- ing anybody. That was when I realized the heartbreak — how many people had people miss- ing.” Bigelow began to feel guilty about “giving so many people hope of closure.” “They have some particu- lar person deeply at heart, and they’re just scanning all the time, looking, and when they see one of these things, they pick up the phone and call,” Bi- gelow said. This time, Bigelow was able to provide more detail in his re- lease. “As a result, I got very few calls, ” Bigelow said. People are often slow to ile reports about people who have tran- sient lifestyles, but it’s rare for a middle-class person’s disap- pearance to draw so little atten- tion. “This guy seems like the kind of guy that people would be looking for,” Bigelow said. “He had Vibram-soled shoes — those things are like $20 a toe. It’s odd.” Getting to ‘maybe’ With small staffs and little technology at their disposal, ru- ral coroners research cold cases on evenings and weekends, or whenever they can borrow a few minutes from the reams of appeals, briefs and dense coun- ty reports that continuously pile up. And they seek help wherev- er they can ind it. Bigelow took the man’s teeth to a dentist, who created records and turned them over to the Washington State Patrol. WSP, in turn, entered them into the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, an FBI data- base. NCIC compared the Pillar Rock man’s tooth charts to re- cords going back to the 1980s, and spit out a list of 141 men who had gone missing in Wash- ington during the time period when he likely died. NamUs, other databases, and tipsters added still more names to Bige- low’s ever-expanding list. When investigators ran Waddington’s DNA proile through the CODIS database, it quickly found her identity, but such clear-cut results are fairly rare. “Sometimes, you can come pretty close to knowing,” Bi- gelow explained. “Other times, depending on the quality of the dental records or the remains, all you can do is say, ‘I can’t exclude this person.’” After that, it was down to Bigelow to igure out which of the many missing men he could cross off of his list. Hours upon hours of reading, dialing, researching, and waiting, wait- ing, waiting on return calls, po- lice reports and search results. “There’s a lot of detective work, even when there are oth- er potential matches,” Bigelow said. Bones, everywhere Bigelow again called on Taylor, the forensic anthropolo- gist, for help. In her lab, Taylor will remove the man’s remain- ing fatty tissue, then examine and preserve the bones. Just as with Waddington, she will send samples to UNT for DNA test- ing. A Washington native who earned her doctorate at the Uni- versity of Arizona, Taylor has worked out of the King Coun- ty Medical Examiner’s ofice since 1996. Though it’s a rela- tively new ield, the demand for her unique services is growing. Taylor sometimes responds to scenes when bodies turn up. People regularly call on her to examine bones, or photos of bones found around the state. “A lot of what I’m doing is evaluating a bone and asking, ‘Is this human?’ Because there are bones everywhere,” Taylor said. In addition to using the da- tabases, she works with police, the media and other experts, in- cluding a forensic artist. She also spends a lot of time talking with the families of the missing, en- couraging them to do their part to keep investigations active. “We really try to explore ev- ery avenue,” Taylor said. “If you know of somebody that’s miss- ing, you have to report them, and you have to be vigilant to make sure that somebody is get- ting them into the system.” ‘Everybody should get a name’ Taylor cautions that DNA testing is “not the magic bullet everyone thinks it is.” Frus- tratingly, sometimes there’s just not enough to work with, especially with old, weathered remains. “What we have to do then is put it on the shelf and wait for the technology to get better, and then you resubmit it,” Taylor said. “You never give up.” It’s too soon to say whether this man’s bones will provide usable DNA, or other clues to his identity. Without a name, in- vestigators are unlikely to ever igure out how he died. Some- times, though, families do get answers against all odds. Taylor and her collaborators recently solved a seemingly hopeless cold case from 1989. When she inally met the victim’s sister, Taylor’s irst words were, “I have been waiting 20 years to talk to you!” “Every one of these people that are in my care have fam- ilies and are loved by some- body. It’s excruciating not to be able to igure out who they are. You know that they are being missed. You just don’t know by whom,” Taylor said. “You want to return them to their families. Everybody should get a name. They came into this world with a name. They should leave it with a name.” Authorities remove explosive device from Wallowa Lake Federal, state and coun- ty law enforcement oficials converged at Wallowa Lake on Friday afternoon to re- trieve and disable a small de- vice that was discovered un- der water near a public beach. C INNABAR M OUNTAIN R ENDEZVOUS is hosting a S PAGHETTI D INNER F UNDRAISER for L ISA S HAFFER Lisa recently found out she has kidney cancer and will be having surgery on July 29. Join us on J ULY 30 TH AT M T . V ERNON C OMMUNITY H ALL D OORS OPEN AT 4 P . M . Silent Auction (ends at 6 p.m.) Raffle & Door Prizes Volunteers welcome. Contact Kristin at 541-620-8384, Wade at 541-620-0550, Drew at 541-792-0393 or Leslie at 541-620-0442. Wallowa County Sheriff Steve Rogers said a group of off-duty search and rescue members was diving near the area at the north end of the lake “about two weeks ago” and found the device during a recreational dive. The divers identiied their discovery as a possible explo- Debbie Ausmus 245 South Canyon Blvd. John Day, OR 97845 OPEN WED. & THUR. 9 am - 5 pm 541-575-1113 24 hrs/7 days wk debbie.ausmus@ countryfinancial.com - N ote of T hanks - I would like to give a huge heartfelt thank you to the Northside Ambulance Crew for their many years of dedicated service. You have all gone above and beyond to save the lives of others. May God bless you for your kindness and compassion. Sincerely, Nancy Morgan sive device and reported it to the sheriff’s ofice, which notiied state and federal au- thorities. An FBI dive team was then assembled and tasked with removing the de- vice. Members of the Ore- gon State Police also were brought in to handle the de- vice once it was removed from the water. OSP Explo- sives Specialist Dennis Wag- ner from the Hermiston ofice described the pipe bomb as a cylinder “about 1 inch in di- ameter and 8 inches long and wrapped in black tape.” Wagner and another OSP trooper took the device to a safe location outside of Jo- seph and detonated it soon after it was removed from the lake. Wagner said it was difi- cult to estimate how powerful the pipe bomb was since other explosives were used to initi- ate detonation. However, he agreed that it certainly was more powerful than an M80 and closer to a stick of dyna- mite. “In my opinion, it proba- bly was some teenagers who made this and left it there,” Sheriff Rogers said. “Our main concern was the safety of the public. There was con- cern that this thing would be dragged out onto the bank, dry out and then detonate.” The device was discovered just east of the public beach and boat launch area at the north end of the lake. It was in the small channel that feeds into the Wallowa River. Your Rural Fa mily Health Clinic Grant County HEALTH Department 528 E. Main, St. E, John Day Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm Karen Triplett, FNP Services Provided: By Scot Heisel EO Media Group • Primary Care • Acute Care • Women’s Health Exams • Men and Children Exams • Immunizations • Family Planning • Contraception • Pregnancy Testing & Referrals • HIV Testing & Referrals • Cacoon • WIC • High Risk Infants • Maternity Case Management Grant County Health Department does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, or age in admission, treatment, or participation in its programs, services and activitie s, or in employment. Appointments available Call and schedule your appointment today! TOLL FREE 888-443-9104 or 541-575-0429