America is haunted by 100,000 missing persons and 40,000 unidentified
sets of remains. Only one lab can truly connect the lost and the dead—
and it's revealing the secrets of serial killers in the process
BY JESSICA SNYDER SACHS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW GEIGER
IKE A COWBOY k.oseiy holding the
reins, Larry Weatherman steers up
Deer Creek Road with his left hand
oTi the wheel, his right arm
ready at his side. His upper
body rocks with the motion of the
pickup as he navigates the dirt road's
gauntlet of potholes and rocks. Since
his retirement from the Missoula
County Sheriff's Department in 2000,
Weatherman has adopted ihe hushy
white mustache and Stetson of a
gentleman rancher. But on a snowy
Saturday in March, he has driven his
two passengers the 50 miles down
from his 20 acres above Montana's
Seeley Lake to revisit the forlorn
woods that served, three decades ago,
as the dumping grounds for Montana's
most notorious serial killer.
A gust of snow hits the windshield.
11 (High the swirl, Weatherman spots
narrow break ÍTI the pine and fir
trees lining the road. He pulls into
a shallow ditch and opens his door.
'He liked to take his girlfriends up
here to parly," he says.
Weatherman was a young officer
in 1974 when he investigated the
first in a series of gruesome murders
ihat ended a way of life in Missoula,
place where people had left their
doors unlocked and women felt
comfortable walking home alone
fronri the local bar. The first
viclini was a preacher's wife
found gagged, bound, and
shot in the basement of her
home, her husband's handgun
jammed lit'tween her legs. In
addition to questioning the
husband, Weatherman briefly
suspected a high school boy
who neighbors had spotted in the
victim's backyard that day, A grand
jury found insufficient evidence to
charge either suspet t.
Over the next 12 years, the
seemingly random murders
continued. Three teenage girls and
a niiirried couple were killed, and
ihc lown suffered a spate of home
intrusions thought to have been
thwarted rapes. Then ihe improbable
happened. In 1986 tlie husband oí'
a would be victim, already trussed
and stabbed, managed to break
free and kill 30 year oltl Wayne
Nance in a bloody struggle. Nance,

: THREE KEY FACTS

The number of missing-person investigations and un-
identified remains means murders often go unreported

U.S. criminclogists now suspect there could be 1,600

serial killings a year—far more than prior estimates.

A lab at the University of North Texas analyzes DNA to

identify victims, and closes cases in the process.
a baby-faced furniture deliveTyman
and part-time bouncer, was the
high-schooler Weatherm¿in had
suspected in 1974. Postmortem
searches of Nance's bedroom
and his father's house imcovered
evidence of at least three additional
murders and of other break-ins.
But hope for further information
about the murders died with Nance.
Weatherman was left with the
unidentified remains of two young
victims. One of them was "Debbie
Deer Creek," a teenager whose skeleton
he had chiseled out of a frozen grave
alongside Deer Creek Road some
21 months before Nance's death.
Several strands of dyed hair enabled
Weatherman to connect her to a
photo of a dark-haired drifter that bar

I
patrons knew as "Robin" before she HAUNTED Retired Missoula sheriff
disappeared a few weeks after moving Larry Weatherman [above], who in-
in with Nance. Weatherman sent out vestigated Nance's murders. Betow:
a topographical map of the scene.
scores of bulletins to the FBI and
regional law-enforcement agencies.
But the girl's picture and street name
failed to locate family.
It would take more than hair
strands and a faded picture to identify
Debbie Deer Creek. It would take
technology—still two decades away—
that could extract minute amounts of
fractured DNA to reveal an indelible
link to a victim's family. It would
take one brother's unceasing search
to find out what happened to his
runaway sister. And perhaps most of
all, it would take the U.S. Department
of Justice's slow but horrifying
realization that there may be far more
serial killers on the loose in America
than anyone had ever expected.
For two decades, a facial
reconstruction made from Debbie
Deer Creek's skull sat on top of
Weatherman's bookcase facing that of
another girl, "Christy Crystal Creek,"
discovered by a hunter two miles
farther up the same mountain road
above Nance's home. Weatherman is
stiil iroubled when he thinks of the
nameless girls. "I know somebody
once cared for them," he says.
THE: SILENT MISSING
Debbie and Christy are far from alone,
and the same may be said for the likes
of Wayne Nance. In a recent issue of
the scientific journal Homicide Studies,
criniiiiologist Kenna Quinet wrote thai
conventional calculations seriously
underestimate the number of serial
muriler victims. "The problem may be
10 times worse than we imagined, " she
says, Instead of 180 victims a year in
the U.S., there maybe as manyas 1,800.
(^uinet, a nationally renowned
homicide expert at Indiana-Purdue
University Indianapolis, bases her
conclusion.'i on simple arithmetic.
AccKirding to the Department
of liistlce, up to 40,000 sets of
unidentified human remains sit in
police-evidence lockers and medical
examiners' offices across the nation.
If resolved cases are any guide,
the Tnajority are murder victims.
Against this, Quinet factors the
homicides suspected in a significant
proportion—as much as 20 percent—
of missing'person cases, more than
100,000 of which remain open at any
time in this country.
(iuinet bolsters her new estimates
with evidence of thf lengthy careers
of the st'rial killers who are eventually
caught and convicted. "Typically,
these killers operate under ihe radar
for years, even decades," she explains.
Studies show that male serial killers
average six to 11 victims over a nine-
year period. Female serial killers
(primarily health care workers)
average seven to nine victims over the
same window. And that's just those
who get caught. "I would guess that at
any given moment," she says, "there
are at least two people in each state
committing serial murder"^more
than 100 serial killers on the loose.
Washington State is currently tracking
at least four: the so called 22-Calibe]
Killer, the Index Killer, the Lewiston
Valley Killer and the Snohomish
County Dismemberment Killer.
Meanwhile, other serial killers
are operating too randomly or
infrequently to generate a pattern
or are cunning enough to prey on
those unlikely tu be missed. Quinet
calls these possihle victims America s
"missing missing," the tens of
thousands whose disappearance is iiot
taken seriously by law-enforcement
agencies. They include those that law
enforcement assumes to be "missin};"
by choice: runaways, transients,
prostitutes, and anyone who has an
outstanding bench warrant (the irony.
Quinet notes, is that the warrant can
be for the missing person's failure to
appear in court).
|ohn Morgan, deputy director
for science and technology at the
National Institute of Justice, the
research arm of ihe Departmeni
of Justice, believes ihat part of ihe
problem is the increasingly transient
nature of American life. "We live in
a more fragmented society," he .says
"A loi of homicides that occur iiivoh'e
strangers." And for a greater number
of the victims, living far from their
hometowns and disconnected from a
social network, their absence won't be
noticed, or they will be dismissed ai
having simply moved on. As a result,
Morgan says, it's now less likely "that
a particular homicide will be resolvi'd
and the killer brought to justice."
The first step in solving these
crimes—even before a detective
can start to connect the clues—is
connecting the bodies to the missing.
"After all," Quinet says, "it's hard lo
conduct a murder investigation whi-n
you don'l know who the victim is."
MEDIUL MURDERS
KILLERS IN
THE ICU
High on the back wall o l the New
Jersey Poison Center in Newark,
beyond a displijy case filled with
bottles of ant killer, antifreeze
and other ingredients of note-
worthy cases, hangs an elec-
tronic map of the state. !t displays
dozens of glowing red dots. Each
marks the origin of a call received
over the previous 24 hours. Up-
dates sweep down the map every
Ki minutes, and the staff knows
where to expect clusters based on
population. "This is one way that
computerization can help us pick
up unexpected hotspots," says
medical director Steven Marcus.
"But it's no substitute for the way
a person can recognize suspicious
p.itterns."
Marcus is referring to how
tcxicologists got wind of New
Jersey's most infamous serial
killer. In June 2003, a pharma-
cist at Somerset Medical Center
in Somerville called the poison
center after a patient nearly
died of digoxin overdose. The
woman wasn't supposed to be on
the heart medication at all, and
the pharmacist wanted to know
whether a Korean mushroom tea
she had drunk might contain a
botanical version of the drug. The
poison-center itaff ruled out that
pijssibility. But they remembered
that case when, a short time later,
they got another call from Som-
eiset, this time involving another
lile-threatening overdose.
"That's when we asked, 'What
the hell is going on over there?
Have you had any other unex-
p ained overdoses?' " Marcus
recalls. The hospital pharmacist
aiJmitted that there had been
tvjo insulin overdoses in the same
intensive-care unit. "We told
them they needed to call the
PDPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 5 7

FIELDWORK
ONE IN A MILLION
Derek Bachmann was 14 in 1984 when
he helped his 15-year-old sister, Marci,
pack her hags and run away from their
Vancouver, Washington, home. "She
told me my stepfather was touching
her, making her touch him," he recalls.
"I told her, 'You're right, you need to
get the hell out of here.' " That was the
last time he saw her. "The fact that I
helped her pack lias always haunted
me," says Bachmann, now a Web
marketer living outside St. Louis. "I
mean, there were five different serial
killers in the Northwest at the time.'"
(In fact, there were at least eight.)
In 1991 Bachmann hegan to search
for his sister, if only to confirm his
fears. "I think I knew that if Marci
was alive," he says, "she would have
contacted me." He called and wrote
to scores of homicide task forces and
vice squads across the country, the
latter in case Marci had fallen into
street walking. "1 tried everything,"
he says. "1 tried psychics. I hired a
private investigator, spent $10,000
on him. Got nothing."
By 2000, Web sites such as the
Doe Network offered Bachmann a
new resource. Maintained by amateur
detectives and families of the missing,
these cyber-bulletin boards feature
case histories and, when possible,
photos or artist re-creations of the
unnamed dead, typically gleaned
from news and police reports. Bach-
mann began spending all-nighters
at his computer. His obsession
put a strain on a short-lived
marriage, he admits with a slow
shake of his head. "The atrocities
IVe seen looking for my sister."
Among them was a flower-adorned
memorial page dedicated to a girl
named Robin, with a photo of a
dark-haired girl in glasses under the
banner "Do you recognize this face?"
Bachmann looked again. There was
something familiar about the mouth
and nose. "I showed it to my relatives,"
I
DARK HISTORY Top: Derek and Marci
Bachmann in 1971. Above: the photo
in which Derek identified his Lost
sister. Below: Dixie Hybki and Dr.
Rhonda Roby at the University of
North Texas Health Science Center.
I • ••»••>••
he recalls. "They said, 'No way. Marci
never wore glasses.' " Besides, the hair
color was wrong. Still, a few months
later, he dialed the number provided
for the Missoula County Sheriff's
Department and left a message for
Captain Greg Hintz. No return call.
When Marci left home in 1984,
Seattle's Green River Killer was at the
height of a spree that would eventually
claim the lives of as many as 49
women, mainly prostitutes and teenage
runaways. Bachmann wrote lo King
Counly detective Tom ¡ensen, head
of the Green River Task Force, who
promised to compare Marci s dental
records with the impressions taken
from the four unidentiHed victinis in
bis custody. But no dental records were
available, and lensen added Marci's file
to those jamming his filing cabinets.
In 2001, King County sheriff's
deputies arrested 53 year-old truck
painter Gary Ridgway for the Green
River killings; two years later, he was
sentenced to 48 consecutive life terms.
The work of the Green River Task
Force was finished. But )ensen still had
more than 100 missing persons and
suspected homicides in his files.
Jensen's captain assigned three
detectives from the disbanded task
force to review the cases and make a
final effort to close them. And so, in
the summer of 2005, detective Raphael
Crenshaw called Derek Bachmann in
Missouri: Was Marci still missing?
Crenshaw told him about a new
program thai altempled to match
family DNA against unidentified
remains. Bachmann was eager to
supply his, but Crenshaw also needed
samples from his parents.
"I knew my dad would take a lot
of convincing," Bachmann says. But
he did convince his mother, who still
lived in Washington. The next week,
she rubbed a cotton swah against
the inside of her cheek, sealed it in
a plastic baggie, and sent it to the
sheriff, who shipped it on to Texas.
•••• ill*** **• ••• HI •• • •*•
CONNECTING DNA'S OOTS
When Nance and Ridgway were going
about their grisly business, no method
was available to connect the missing,
like Marci Bachmann, to the dead. But
there's now a lab, in Fort Worih, Texas,
that can close the gap.
It's another March morning, and
a steady rain has Fort Worth's Trinity
River running high through the city's
cultural district. On the other side of
Camp Bowie Boulevard, employees
and students are leaping over the
ponds growing in the driveway of
the University of North Texas Health
Science Center. The third floor of
this beige stucco high-rise is home
to the university's Center for Human
Identification, the only academic
DNA lab in the country dedicated to
identifying human remains.
In 1989, molecular biologist Arthur
Eisenberg began using DNA to settle
questions of identity in cases ranging
from paternity to homicide. For the
next decade, Eisenberg developed
many of the procedures and standards
used in DNA testing today. Around
2000, he began to focus on missing
persons, and in 2001, he and his staff
built a state DNA database. Since then,
the center's capacity has grown to
handle cases from across the country.
The victim specimens that arrive at
the center range from well-preserved
femurs (thigh bones) to broken slivers
of bone that have been sitting inside
police warehouses for decades. It's
far easier to extract DNA from recent
samples, and the center prioritizes
easy identifications. Weil-preserved or
relatively fresh remains for which a
family connection is already suspected
take precedence over colder cases with
no leads. The center has been able
to solve one in every four of its cases.
Still, it's the difficult cases—the
shots in tlie dark—-that tantalize, says
the center's project manager, Rhonda
Roby. She speaks from experience.
having spent her career developing
m POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 5Ü
•••••••* »•••••••••!
methods for extracting DNA from
severely degraded remains. In 1991
Roby began working in the Ofñrc ol
the Armed Forces Medical Examinei,
where she helped develop methods
for identifying the skeletal remains
of American soldiers from Vietnam,
Korea and World War 11. In 2001 she
flew to New York City to help set up
protocols for the unimaginable task of
identifying more than 20,000 pieces of
human tissue retrieved from the ruins
of the World Trade Center. She has
also helped identify victims of Chile's
Pinochet regime and, in a curious
aside, the remains of Nicholas II and
the Romanov family of tsarist Russia.
In 2004, shortly before Roby's
arrival, the center achieved its first
successful DNA extraction in an
extremely cold case. The remains^.!
slender, yellowing femur—had
arrived by FedEx. Forensic analyst
Lisa Sansom cataloged the bone in
the center's database as F2775.1EC
and carried it into the lab's bone
room, behind a door flagged "Forensic
Low-Copy Area, AUTHORIZED ¡T.RSONNF;.
ONLY." The amount of genetic material
retrieved from old bone tends to be
so small as to be easily overwhelmed
by the ambient DNA of a floating skin
flake or a saliva droplet. Inside the
Low-Copy Room, analysts don full
gowns, face ma.sks and surgical glo\es.
A positive-pressure system keeps
"dirty" outside air from flowing in,
and analysts have their genetic profile
entered into the center s DNA database
so that those will be excluded fiom
target sequences.
The work differs from the kind if
DNA fingerprinting used to identify
biological evidence left at a crime.
It is extremely difficult^sometime;.
impossible^to extract conventional
nuclear DNA markers from an old
bone. The center has become skilled in
extracting and analyzing a hardier but
less-known source of DNA: that of the
mitochondria that reside in our cells.
TIT
MEDICAL MURDERS ICONTOI
police. They likely had an Angel
of Death on their hands," Marcus
says- Hospital administrators
waited another four months—
and five more suspicious deaths—
before they reported their fears
about Charles Cullen, the nurse
who later pled guilty to killing 29
patients at medical centers across
New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
"Unfortunately, Charles Cul-
ien was far from unique," says
forensic nurse Beatrice Yorker of
California State University-Los
Angeles, in the first tally of its
kind, Yorker and her colleagues
have documented 90 criminal
prosecutions of health-care work-
ers charged with serial killings of
patients between 1970 and 2006
worldwide, 36 of them in the
U.S. To date, 54 of the cases have
resulted in convictions associated
with more than 2,000 deaths.
At Indiana-Purdue University
Indianapolis, criminologist Kenna
Quinet estimates that America's
serial medical killers murder
between 500 and 1,000 patients
a year. Next to Cuilen's 16-year
killing spree, Quinet cites the
long run of Michael Swango, an
American physician suspected in
as many as 60 murder-, and con-
victed in 2000 of three.
These dark angels aren't prac-
tii ing euthanasia, adds Katherine
R¿imslíind, a forensic psycholo-
gist at DeSales University and
the author of Inside the Minds of
Ht^aithcare Serial Killers. They kill
to ease only their own pain. "Cui-
len's murders clearly increased
whenever he was going through
a difficult situation in his personal
life," she says. 'As with so many
serial killers, he seemed to em-
power himself with his murders."
Cullen had been fired mul-
tifile times from other hospitals;
each time, he simply moved on
to a nearby facility. Once he was
caught, his case sparked a flurry
FIELDWGRK
IB
I
MISSING. NOT LOST Marci at age 13
[top]. To analyze a femur [above],
scientists cut into the bone's interior.
Oerek Bachmann [below], who once
helped his sister run away from home,
later helped identify her remains.
GO POPULAR SCIENCE JANUARY 2 0 0 3
Except for identical twins, each
person's nuclear DNA is unique. But
each of us has another set of DNA
located outside the cells nucleus and
inside the mitochondria, the tiny
organs that supply a cell with energy.
We inherit mitochondrial DNA, known
as mtDNA, directly from our mothers,
and we share it with our siblings. It's
not unique, but mtDNA is enough to
narrow the search for a victim's family.
Sansom spent almost an hour
scrubbing and sanding the femur's
surface before attempting extraction.
Few of the bones here contain marrow,
which dissolves in the first two or
three years after death. F2775.1EC had
spent some 20 years in a box inside
a police warehouse, so DNA would
have to come from the scant cellular
material inside the bone's white
PEOPLKÜNLYKNRAi
scaffolding. She used a woodworker s
dremel to cut a rectangular window in
the thickened area of bone just below
the femur's rounded head, where the
thigh muscles once attached. Next she
chilled, pulverized, and blended the
sample inside a freezer mill loaded
with sterilized hall bearings. Using
an automated chemical process, she
broke open the bone cells, released
their genetic contents, and washed,
concentrated, and purified the extract.
For genetic analysis, Sansom first
had to increase the DNA to detectable
amounts using a process called DNA
amplification. Forensic software
translated the results into a four-color
graph of peaks and troughs. Drawing
on her training and experience, she
translated each graphic peak into one
of the four nucleotide letters in the
DNA alphabet. It took her about a
week to process sample F2775.1EC.
When the amplification signals
aren't clear, the chances for a reliable
match plummet. In the worst case, the
sequence data prove ambiguous, and
workers must repeat the extraction
and analysis. Sansom got her sequence
on the first try. She uploaded it to the
center's DNA database. No hits. Then
she uploaded the data to the FBI's
national missing-persons database.
Again, no hits. Not yet.
SCALING THE BACKLDG
In 2004 the center received a major
investment to help realize Arthur
Eisenberg's goal of establishing a
National Center for the Identification
of Human Remains. It was the first
of several National Institute of fustice
grants given over a five year period
totaling more than $7 million. The
center's mission was to perform
DNA testing on unidentified skeletal
remains and "family reference"
samples free of charge for any local
or state law enforcement agency that
requested it. It's now a clearinghous^>
at the heart of an effort to address the
thousands of missing persons and
unidentified remains discovered each
year—what the justice department
calls "America's silent mass disaster."
"The World Trade Center attack
devastated this country with its
massive loss of life," Eisenberg
says. "But if people only knew how
many more unidentified murder
victims there are . . . If you go back
even 20 years, there are literally
hundreds of thousands of families
wbo have missing loved ones." Even
with generous funding, progress
will ultimately hinge on making
identifications cheaper, faster and
more definitive, he adds. Laboratories
such as the Center for Human
Identification will be swamped
now that more states mandate the
collection of family-reference samples
with missing-person reports. The
center, Eisenberg says, must advance
the technology used to identify human
remains as it goes. By way of example,
he cites a new program that can use
broken bits of traditional nuclear DNA
to identify weathered bones.
 Ihe tests scan some 40 lengths of
highly fragmented DNA for single-
nucI(!Otide polymorphisms (or SNPs,
pronounced "snips"), one-letter
variations in the genetic code. The
SNPs are then combined to create
unique DNAfingerprints.If the center's
tests are sttccessful—and Eisenberg
says they're making rapid progress—
SNPs will allow forensic analysts to
identify old bones more reliably than
they can using mtDNA. "If SNPs pans
out, it will be another revolution in how
we deal with homicide," the National
Institute of Justice's Morgan says.
"There will no longer be a reason to
have unidentified remains."
In addition to testing such systems,
the Onter for Human Identification
is collaborating with other institutions
ill the cfTori to improve identification.
It is working with the University
of Tennessee, for example, to
automate DNA analysis and speed up
identifications for all the investigators
and families tortured by a cold case.
Right now, the center's tests produce
a chürt of several hundred peaks and
valleys that a trained forensic analyst
must read one nucleotide "letter" at a
time. A second analyst then reads it
again to verify its accuracy. Although
complete automation of the process
remains a distant dream, Tennessee
scientists have designed a software
program that can read "perfect"
sequences, or unambiguous graphics.
Soon it may be able to replace the
second read and thus slash personnel
costs and turnaround time.
Hut extracting and reading DNA
from unidentified remains is only
half the challenge. That DNA must
get linked to the right missing person.
What the country has sorely lacked,
Morgan says, is a central repository
for information such as photos,
fingtirprints, dental records, DNA
sequences and other identifying
information on both missing persons
and unidentified victims. Make that
database searchable, and it becomes a
profitable tool for homicide detectives.
Open it to the public, and it becomei
a merciful resource for the thousands
who currently spend their nights
combing disturbing Web sites,
In 2005 the U.S, Attorney Gener.U's
office formed a Missing Persons
Task Force to develop the National
Missing and Unidentified Persons
System, or NamUs {identifyus.org). In
2007 the first part of the system—a
searchable database of unidentified
human remains—went live. Last ye,ir,
the program opened up a national
database of missing-person re[)orts.
And later this year, NamUs plans
to connect the two, with a cross-
searchable database that automatically
matches the mií;sing and the dead.
THE MATCH
Before the NamUs database is
complete, though, researchers at
Fort Worth's Center for Human
Identification have to rely on
meticulous information-gathering
and luck. The center has put together
a DNA-coUection kit for family
members of the missing, which it
sends out free of charge to the naticn's
police and sheriff's departments.
Law-enforcement officers mail cheek
swabs collected from the family back
to the center, where workers analyze
them in batches of up to 80 to yield
both nuclear- and mitochondrla^D^lA
profiles of parents and siblings.
As each family member's DNA
fingerprint comes off the line, it
too goes through the databases to
search for approximate matches
among the dead. The process is
spellbinding, claims forensic analyst
Melody losserand. Any of thousands
of mysteries could be solved at that
moment. "Even though I do searches
30 or 40 times a week, I've never
walked away," she says. "I sit here with
bated breath." ¡CDNTINÜEO ON PAGI 64)
MEDICAL MURDERS tCQNTD)
of attention and calls for reform.
New Jersey passed laws mandat-
ing that hospitals report disci-
plinary actions to state medical
boards, and New Jersey senators
Jon Corzine (now the state's
governor) and Frank Lautenberg
sent a letter to the U.S. Health
Resources and Services Adminis-
tration demanding that it begin
to register such disciplinary
information in a National Practi-
tioner Data Bank, The American
Hospital Association convened a
task force to produce guidelines
to assure greater patient safety.
Yet four years later, the task
force hasn't produced the prom-
ised guidelines, AHA spokesman
David Allen says. And the Health
Resources and Services Adminis-
tr.îtion has drawn up plans but
hasn't implemented them.
So what's a hospital—or
patient—to do? Various propos-
aU have been floated, such as
"death radar" software that
would flag high death rates as-
sociated with a given employee.
Of restrict access to potentially
lethal medications. But Yorker
argues that the best tool is a
well-trained staff, "What I teach
nurses is bow hospitals can be
cr me scenes," she says of her
forensic-nursing courses Adds
Quinet, "It's quite common for
colleagues to have long-standing
nicknames like 'Dr. Death' for
some of these killers. But still
they refuse to believe that the
person is actually capable of
murder." One even jokingly re-
ferred to himself as an "Angel of
Death" when others noticed that
his shifts appeared jinxed.
As for protecting yourself the
next time you're in the hospital?
"Call me paranoid," says Marcus,
"but when I'm in that hospital
bed and someone comes in with
a drug, I want to know what it is
and what it's for." •
PQPSCI.CGM POPULAR SCIENCE R l
 The FIELDWÜRK

DOUBLE ZAP [CnNTINUED FROtvl PAGE Gil

KILLER cor
I

Other )osserand re m embers the day in

ZAP 1: Coming
March 2006 when Unidenlified Person
detector at you is a radar patrol F2775.1EC flashed across her screen.
ZAP 2: Another radar .She had jusi uploaded fainily-refcreiicf
will find ¡ust over the hill sample F3352.1US, submitted by the
King County Sheriff's office. Like the
reels of a slot machine, twin columns of
Your Warning from an Ordinary Detector "Beep!" numbers rolled down her monitor. The
Your Warning from Valentine One: Two radars, one ahead, one behind.' rows for six out of six mitochondrial-
DNA base pairs flashed green. A
• VI play-by-play: First, you see a red arrow. It points ahead The Bogey Counter perfect match. But ml DNA alone, she
shows two radars. As the patrol car goes by, an arrow follows to point behind. knew, wasn't definitive. Fortunately,
Another arrow points it flashes to indicate the greater threat. back in 2004, Sansom was able to pull
seven markers for nuclear DNA from
"Once you live with ths nrriu^^.s

ZapZap.valentine1.com you'll wonder how you ever

mBnagad without them."
the victim's bone sample, [osserand
compared the family-reference sample
— Car and Driver with that. All of them matched.
josserand retrieved the folder for
1-800-331-3030 Unidentified Person F2775.1EC and
Vatenllne One Rsdar Locator with Laser Detection S399 HADA» LQCATOñ checked it against the file for the family
Carrying Case S2S / Concealed Display - S33 Valeniing Rgseaicti, Int
Sépanme ntNo.XGia Ph513'SS4-a9[K}
reference sample. "The metadata all
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H M 3-384-8976 matched," she says of Debbie Deer
Creek's physical descriptors: feniale;
approximate age, 17; weight, 125;
height, 5'7". Estimated date and place ol
death: 8/19/1984, Missoula, Montana.
Families Have Saved Up To 50% On Heating Costs From the missing-person report,
And never hove to buy fuel — oil, gas, kerosene, wood — ever agoin! Josserand read the name: Marcelia
Your Benefits with Hydro-Sii: Bachmann. Last contact: 5/1984,
• Slash heating cost with Hydro-Sil
Vancouver, Washington. "All I could
• Furnace free - duct free think was, 'I wonder how this poor
• Lilelime warranty. No service contracts girl got from here to there?' " she
• Safe, complete peace of mind
Contact us says. Still, certainty depended on
• Clean, no fumes, environmentally safe
• Ü 1 . listed today for more family samples, ideally from the
• Preassembled — ready lo use info and biological father. So the call went out
• Portable (110V} or peimaneni (220V) FREE catolog! to Derek Bachmann through Detective
• Whale house heating or single room
Crenshaw in King County. Crenshaw
Disiount Q. didn't say anything about the bone
Lifetime Warranty 220VOtT Appro». Ateo
S&K
PERMAtJEtll to Heal PricB "'^• from Missoula. "1 gave him the spiel I
8'2000 w 250-300 sf $25 $3!9
Hydro-Sil is a high performance individual give everyone, so as not to get linpes
6'1500 w 180-250 sf $25 $289
room heating system that can save you
5'1250 w 130-180 sf $25 $259
up," he says. " The lab wants more DNA
hundreds of dollars in home heating costs by 4'1000 w 100-130 sf $18 $239 samples to make sure that if there's
replacing old and inefficient heating. It con 3' 750 w 75-100 if $18 $189 a hit, they can narrow it down.' "
replace or supplement your electric heal, gas 2'500w 5075sf $18 $169
or oil furnace and woodstoves. Thermostots - Coll fof options & axoct heater needed. "I called up my dad," Bachmann
Hydro'Sil represents economy in heoting: 110 VOLT POdTABUS ?i U DiscounI n. says, "and flat-out told him, 'You
inside the heoter is o seoled copper chamber ¡Theimostalincluded.) b&n Prite '''^• have to do this. 1 have to know.' "
filled with o hormless silicone fluid designed 5- Hydro-Max 7501500 w $25 $229
3' 750 w - Siticone $18 $179
On March 22, 2006, tlie Center for
for heat retention quolities. The fluid is quickly
Heovy-Dufy 24Ov $25 $329 Human Identification received two
heoted by a varying amount of micro-
Total Amount
FedEx envelopes, one containing a
manaqed proportional power. This exclusive
technology greotly increases energy savings.
cheek swab from Bachmann, the other
Name from his father. The father's nuclear
Check • MasterCard • Viso • Discover Address. DNA matched all ol Debbie Deer Creek's
City

1-800-627-9276 Zip
MosterCard, Visa or Discover Accwnt Information:
www.hydrosil.com Acct #. - ^ » 4 PDPULAR SCIENCE JANUARY 2DDa
Kydro-Sil, P.O. Box 662, Fort Mill, SC 29715 E)<piration Dote
 ECTION
nuclear DNA markers, lo underscore
ihe identification, Derek s mtDNA, like
that of his mother, proved identical.
Following protocol, the Center for
Human Identification relayed the news
to the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, which in turn called
Missoula and Captain Hintz, who had
submitted Debbie Deer Creek s femur
after Lariy Weatherman's retirement.
"I'll never forget his call," Bachmann
says. "I was in a poker tournament and
had to step outside," As Hintz spoke,
Bachmann suddenly realized that he
didn't want "closure" after all, "1 instantly
grasped ihe idea that he was finally
calling back about the Web site photo. 1
toiti him Id been thinking about it, that
iht' picture couldn t havt- been my sister,"
he recalls. "Well, he disabused me of that."
THE FINAL IDENTIFICATION
Almost exactly two years later, on
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BED BATH
BEYON
this snowy March day in Missoula,
Weatherman waits for Derek
Bachmann to step out of the county
truck they have borrowed for their
second visit to the place where
Weatherman unearthed Marci's frozen
remains on Christmas Eve 1984,
Bachmann shivers inside his
leather jacket. The snow quickly
saturates his sneakers as he follows
the retired lawman a quarter of a
mile through the woods to a blufl
above the Clark Fork River. A grove
of spindly conifers still surrounds
the mossy depression that once held
Marci's body. "It was a lot harder the
first time," Bachmann says of the visit.
"Yeah," Weatherman acknowledges.
"That was a hard one for you."
From beyond the bluff comes the
rumbling sound of construction—or
rather, deconstruction^—^echoing up
from the Milltowti Dam below. A
strip of orange and yellow surveyor
flags marks a path past Marci's
gravesite to what will be a viewing
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platform directly above a river
restoration project. In addition
to tearing out the old dam, the
county plans to build a small park.
Construction is due to begin in the
spring, Bachmann has come back,
in part, to ensure that nothing
desecrates Marci s spot. Perhaps he
can even persuade the county to
raise a small memorial, he proposes.
Weatherman nods in agreement,
"I suppose you re ready to pul
all this behind you," Bachmann
offers as the men head back to thi^
truck. "1 don't suppose it ever will
be," Weatherman says, "until we get
Christy identified." At press time,
DNA fnmi Christy's femur had been
entered into the Center for Human
Identification's database of cold-case
remains, as well as the national DNA
database. She's ready to be found
Jessica Snyder Sachs is the author of
Good Germs, Bad Germs, now out
in paperback.
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