Identified! AL - Huntsville, Skeletal, WhtMale UP2747, 45-60, near Hwy 20 @ I-565, May'08 - Ralph Eric Hucher

[christine2448]

I talked to missing clearing house in GA today, about a few things, and they weren't aware of this UID, was working on another recent that came up, wtg for info....made them aware incase it may be someone from here...there are more than 2500 missing in GA. (give or take)......another problem...how do all these agencies communicate and find the proper channels of getting these people ID'd??

 

[SeekingJana]

I have a lifelong thread running through the bones of the UID in Huntsville, and later, I 565.
My father spent most of his career when I was a young child doing surveyeing for new roadwork in the up and coming city of Huntsville, AL. He knew Werner Von Braun, possibly one of the most intelligent men to work on the US space program at Redstone, now Marshall Space Flight Center.
My dad said that in the course of Huntsville's original road infrastructure building, they OFTEN found bones, and always called the police or sheriff if it was not clear that they were animal remains, with an animal skull.
Several times in the 60's, they accidentally unearthed forgotten sacred Native American burial grounds, or so they were told. He said it always unnerved him to have an unmarked grave dug into by the heavy equipment. I grew up with these first hand reports of finding bones- human bones, some probably ancient, some most likely not at all.

After his retirement, when Huntsville was building I 565, he was called by a major contracting firm on the project and asked to do the engineering for all of the exit ramps and the bridgework. He did the modeling and drew up all the plans, which were used, but did not work with them into construction phase. Many of the bridges were found to be defective due to subpar materials early on. It really ate at him that the job was not done up to standards. He and I were both grateful that he didn't have his good name dragged through the red Huntsville clay.

I am sure my father cleaned up the bone and human remain stories quite a bit before telling his little daughter, but I remember them all very vividly still.

My son now works in Huntsville and travels on I 565, the last highway his grandfather designed, every day.
I hope they find out who this is, how long the body has been in the current location, what happened to them, and who did it if foul play is involved.

IF this is Tara Grinstead, the many troubling visions I have had regarding her whereabouts would make perfect sense.. but I doubt we mortals get that lucky. I really want her case to be solved soon.

 

[christine2448]

Thank you for sharing Seeking. Interesting indeed.


We can make a difference now by changing how things like this are handled....check the laws in your state! Visit www.projectjason.org and read about Campaign for the Missing, Law Enforcement/DNA Training.

:blowkiss:

 

[SeekingJana]

Thank you for sharing Seeking. Interesting indeed.


We can make a difference now by changing how things like this are handled....check the laws in your state! Visit www.projectjason.org and read about Campaign for the Missing, Law Enforcement/DNA Training.

:blowkiss:

Christine,
My dad, who is one of the most gentle and kind people I have ever known, with a gentle heart and a trusting disposition ( perhaps despite his extreme intelligence, LOL) would literally go to pieces and possibly not recover physically if he and I were to enter into a discussion of the things he told me that his crew found way back when I was too young to fully understand. The fact that I DO understand now hurts me extremely for him. He did what he knew to do, what they were told to do when bones were found. It makes me sick to my stomach to think what was deemed unimportant or maybe just unsolvable by LE back then. I do not know of any " fresh" corpses found, thank God.

Tonight is the first time that the implications of what the road crews found really hit me full force. It took the remains on I 575 to do so. I feel that a part of me has shifted.. that the " Indian bones" really weren't most of the time.
Of course they had to have found murdered children and adults who were never reported missing in the 1960's, possibly dating back to the Civil War, perhaps back to ancient Native American hunting and burial grounds. ( IDK if Madison Co. Alabama LE actually chalked all the found bone collections up to " Indians" or told the Highway Dept. that).

I can remember so well how he told mother and me that they were often working in fields, beside torn down houses which had had basements, in creek beds and in all different types of rural and semi-rural topography. There were NO roads except for dirt roads, if that. When he helped to build Huntsville's infrastructure the first time, it was literally from the horrible sticky red clay up.
The land which he worked on in the early part of his career as an engineer in Huntsville was sold to the AL Highway Dept, by individuals from ALL walks of life under the Imminent Domain laws for Madison Co. Alabama's road system into, within and out of Huntsville due to the Space Program beginnings and the huge expansion of Redstone Arsenel. I used to ride with him onto Redstone, looking at the secret rockets and the men in uniform.
The best thing I can say may also be the worst thing I can say- It was a different time and place in America and the rural South.
It would kill him to know that he was close to a murder scene, it really would. He is trusting enough still, right now, in his elderly years, to have never considered the possibility that an unmarked grave wasn't simply one where the marker rotted or was stolen.. that it had never been a public burial.

If I were Eudora Welty, there would be a whiz bang short story in the pathos of a young father telling his preschool daughter about the findings of the bones... all of the bones.. all " ancient Indian bones".

I have to go talk to God right now. This is extremely difficult to process.

 

[Always Solvable]

I have a lifelong thread running through the bones of the UID in Huntsville, and later, I 565.
My father spent most of his career when I was a young child doing surveyeing for new roadwork in the up and coming city of Huntsville, AL. He knew Werner Von Braun, possibly one of the most intelligent men to work on the US space program at Redstone, now Marshall Space Flight Center.
My dad said that in the course of Huntsville's original road infrastructure building, they OFTEN found bones, and always called the police or sheriff if it was not clear that they were animal remains, with an animal skull.
Several times in the 60's, they accidentally unearthed forgotten sacred Native American burial grounds, or so they were told. He said it always unnerved him to have an unmarked grave dug into by the heavy equipment. I grew up with these first hand reports of finding bones- human bones, some probably ancient, some most likely not at all.

After his retirement, when Huntsville was building I 565, he was called by a major contracting firm on the project and asked to do the engineering for all of the exit ramps and the bridgework. He did the modeling and drew up all the plans, which were used, but did not work with them into construction phase. Many of the bridges were found to be defective due to subpar materials early on. It really ate at him that the job was not done up to standards. He and I were both grateful that he didn't have his good name dragged through the red Huntsville clay.

I am sure my father cleaned up the bone and human remain stories quite a bit before telling his little daughter, but I remember them all very vividly still.

My son now works in Huntsville and travels on I 565, the last highway his grandfather designed, every day.
I hope they find out who this is, how long the body has been in the current location, what happened to them, and who did it if foul play is involved.

IF this is Tara Grinstead, the many troubling visions I have had regarding her whereabouts would make perfect sense.. but I doubt we mortals get that lucky. I really want her case to be solved soon.

Have you seen or heard any news on this yet? I imagine DNA takes what seems like a lifetime but was hoping they at least had some kind of information.

 

[LadyLuck]

There has not been much information. The police went back to the scene with cadets and combed the woods. The tv reported on it but no one with the police talked to the reporters.

They have not said this was a murder- we will have to wait and see. I was born and raised in Huntsville and we had paved roads, not dirt roads. Huntsville is a very modern town not anything like you see in the movies. It is not a backwoods town.

SeekingJana- did you live in Huntsville and if so where did you go to school?

 

[Salem]

You know, it would be so helpful if they would release a description of the clothing or jewelry or any of those items. We could then search the items out and see if we come up with anything. LE could work on the forensic side of things and let us and the folks at Doe Network work on the other things and this process would go a lot faster I bet. Especially in these older/colder type cases.

I wish they could see the utility and wisdom in sharing information.

Salem

 

[christine2448]

I don't remember, sorry, so sad, so many, if I posted that I talked to GBI MCH about this and they weren't even aware....I am supposed to send them info then maybe they can get us some?

Doing now...before I forget again! :blushing::blushing:

 

[concernedperson]

You know, it would be so helpful if they would release a description of the clothing or jewelry or any of those items. We could then search the items out and see if we come up with anything. LE could work on the forensic side of things and let us and the folks at Doe Network work on the other things and this process would go a lot faster I bet. Especially in these older/colder type cases.

I wish they could see the utility and wisdom in sharing information.

Salem

I so agree with you. Many of us are willing to give up the time and effort it takes to research these cases but there has to be some help from LE. Otherwise we are second guessing and wasting time. There is a whole plethora of people out there who would help if asked. When I think of America's Most Wanted and the info shared with the public and the arrests made it does make one think about help from many areas where there isn't a complete story but the people are still missing.

Just think what this could do for cold cases if there was info on them. Not specifics on who that could have committed the crime but info from the victim recovered that could return them to their families. So much of the time when the victim is recovered and identified then the rest of justice takes place. It is the UID's and the missing that are the most baffling and painful.Most perps don't seem to be talkative when someone is missing but I can assure you that the victim's families are missing them and want them back and want to know where they are.Just to ease this pain for some people would make a lot of us real happy to participate. It is what we can do as humans.

 

[Blink34]

Have you seen or heard any news on this yet? I imagine DNA takes what seems like a lifetime but was hoping they at least had some kind of information.

ANything on this ID? Any specs on the clothing?

 

[christine2448]

ANything on this ID? Any specs on the clothing?

I talked to GBI Missing Clearing House yesterday and they still haven't rec'd anything on this.





"Apparently, somewhere, someone thinks due to these Nancy Grace reports on CNN that this may have national implications. It's causing hardships on our investigators," said Wendell Johnson, Spokesperson for the Huntsville Police Department.

Here's how it causes hardships.
"We've got police agencies, we've got national news agencies calling down here," said Johnson. "Bodies are found all around the country, there are thousands of people who are considered to be missing persons. Now, how this got to be of national interest, we have no idea."
The national media didn't mention the other set of remains in Huntsville that still haven't been identified. A construction worker found the remains in March, while clearing lots in a wooded area off of Meridian Street. Spokesperson Wendell Johnson says the police department got very few calls from other police agencies about this case.
"Not as much as this," said Johnson. "That's why were perplexed. Unless it was just Nancy Grace just coming up with the Peterson case. That's the only conclusion that we can reach," said Johnson.
"We've got two bodies here in Huntsville that have not been identified," NewsChannel 19 asked. "Is there any chance that there's a serial killer in Huntsville?"
"Here again, I'm not going to speculate on that, cause in both cases you had skeletal remains," Johnson replied. "Now remember, someone could go into the woods and anything could happen, you could deal with suicides, homicides, natural causes of death."
"Is the Huntsville Police Department looking for a killer right now?" we asked.
"No," Johnson replied.
"Not at all, since there were two bodies found?" NewsChannel 19 pressed.
"No. First of all, we have not determined the cause of death," Johnson said. "So how can you call it a homicide?"
Right now, both sets of remains are at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, where workers are trying to identify both people.
They are trying to use dental records to determine the identity of the body that was found on Meridian Street.

http://www.whnt.com/global/story.asp?s=8291915

 

[Blink34]

Not to be flip- but why would you not ask more questions about the remains found, ie:

Were the skeletons complete? Was there any obvious trauma visible?

Was there other evidence collected that might identify a current missing person?

What were the shards of clothing? Undergarments?

Dental record Id's can take as little as one day- Can we then assume that these remains do not already match any dentals on file for currently active missing persons cases? Has there been any tentative ID and what families have been notified?

 

[mspryssy]

This is just one of many unidentified women who have been found in and around Huntsville. Another body was found 01/01/09...They have identified her as Melinda Charlene Haygood. I live in the area and the latest discovery has gotten me interested in them all over again...I would say there are around 10 unsolved murders...all women....SCARY.

 

[future criminologist]

any updates on this UID?

 

[christine2448]

any updates on this UID?

I wrote the ME this morning at AL Dept of For. Sciences inquiring. I didn't see body listed on the site and a lot of the links are broken.

 

[laini]

This is just one of many unidentified women who have been found in and around Huntsville. Another body was found 01/01/09...They have identified her as Melinda Charlene Haygood. I live in the area and the latest discovery has gotten me interested in them all over again...I would say there are around 10 unsolved murders...all women....SCARY.

Welcome to websleuths.

 

[christine2448]

In regard to the remains found along I565 in May of 2008, Huntsville (Alabama) Police are investigating this case.
The contact person is Investigator Michael Leftwich (256) 213-4534.
That have a very good idea of whom the person is, but have yet to obtain or submit anything for comparison.
The person they believe it is has been missing around the same time frame. They have been unable to locate
any dental or other means for comparison. We do have dental charting, and a DNA profile has been uploaded.

If I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to all.

Thanks,

J. Allen Perry
Forensic Investigator I/II
Alabama Dept. of Forensic Sciences
Huntsville Regional Laboratory
716 Arcadia Circle
Huntsville, AL 35801

 

[Donjeta]

He is still unidentified.

https://identifyus.org/cases/2747
Estimated age Adult - Pre 60
Minimum age 45 years
Maximum age 60 years
Race White
Ethnicity
Sex Male
Weight (pounds) , Cannot Estimate
Height (inches) 72, Estimated
Probable year of death 1950 to 2007
Skull and Mandible along with about 30 percent of other bones.
Land surveyors found human remains in a heavily wooded area North of Old Highway 20 near I-565 (between County Line Road and Greenbrier Road).

The timeframe is very wide.
Wonder if they could tell what era the eyeglasses were from.

Says there was no clothing or accessories but that eyeglasses were found.
Dentals and DNA are available. He had fractured and avulsed teeth.

Exlusions:
First Name Last Name Year Of Birth State LKA
Clyde Ellis, Jr. 1956 Mississippi
Gregory Mitchell 1965 Florida
Jesse Work 1938 California

 

[Donjeta]

51 names have been added to the exclusions list since February.

 

[OkieGranny]

My best candidate is Charles Michael Carroll, who went missing from Huntsville on July 1, 2002. He was 49 years old, 6'2" tall, and wore glasses.

If they have a very good idea of who the UID is but don't have enough data to confirm a match, I'd guess it's this guy since he was local and there's no dental or DNA available for him according to NamUs.

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/show/7372