Experts say searching a landfill for criminal evidence can be difficult because theres so much risk of contamination.
Ross Gardner, a national forensics expert based in Oklahoma, said its usually easy to know where to start looking, because most landfills are strictly organized into cells by location and date.
If its not well-organized, then its kind of poke and hope, said Gardner, a former Army crime-scene investigator and chief of police in Lake City, Ga.
But even at an organized site, landfill searches are a huge challenge. Almost as soon as debris is spread atop the dump, its compacted by steel-wheeled rollers. By the end of the first day, it will usually be covered with soil to control odors.
Even in a fresh situation like they were dealing with [in the Somer case], unless youre so lucky that the body just pops out on top, youre going to have to do some excavation, said Paul Laska, a forensic consultant in Palm City. As a crime-scene investigator, he spent a month in 1993 excavating a Martin County landfill looking for a little girls body.
That can mean bringing in cadaver dogs trained to sniff for human remains to help narrow the search.
Once crews find debris from the right day and hauler, the search can become more like an archaeological excavation, he said, with material sifted delicately, despite the damage already done by daily landfill operations.
It can be difficult to recognize meaningful evidence in a small mountain of twisted refuse and decay.
Youve got broken glass, broken metal, a lot of just nasty stuff in there, Laska said. Youre going to find bones, because thats a garbage dump.
If a body is discovered, it can be difficult to preserve DNA evidence even if investigators move slowly and carefully. Most of the evidence can be contaminated before search crews even arrive.
Though evidence of sexual abuse inside the body may be preserved, Gardner said anything on the exterior of the body might not hold up as evidence because so much trash gets mixed together. Debris surrounding the body could be connected to the case, such as a glove or a piece of clothing, but that can be very hard to prove.
