AL AL - Prattville, BlkFem 40-60, UP5000, Medallion glued to skull, Sep '07

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There's probably a thread for this case but I can't find it

1362UFAL - Unidentified Female
653UFAL2.jpg

Medallion glued to skull.

Date of Discovery: September 29, 2007
Location of Discovery: Prattville, Autauga County, Alabama
Estimated Date of Death: 1950 to 2007
State of Remains: Not recognizable - Partial skeletal parts only
Cause of Death: Unknown

Physical Description
Estimated Age: 40-60 years old
Race: Black/African American
Gender: Female
Height: Unknown
Weight: Unknown
Hair Color: Unknown
Eye Color: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Unknown

Identifiers
Dentals: Available
Fingerprints: Not Available
DNA: Available

Clothing & Personal Items
Clothing: Unknown
Jewelry: Medallion glued to the skull. See photograph.
Additional Personal Items: Unknown

Circumstances of Discovery
A skull and upper jaw bone were found on the roadside at 683 Old Autaugaville Road in Prattville. The skull had a medallion glued to it.

Investigating Agency(s)
Agency Name: Autauga County Coroner's Office
Agency Contact Person: N/A
Agency Phone Number: 334-350-6779
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: 08MM00053

NCIC Case Number: Unknown
NamUs Case Number: 5000
Former Hot Case Number: 1684

Information Source(s)
NamUs

Admin Notes
Added: Prior to 2014; Last Updated: 1/25/2018
 
This case is interesting. The medallion is a pentagram. With the time frame being that long ago I almost wonder if this was a grave robbing situation. With the pentagram I wonder what it is made out of like if it is costume jewelry or sterling. With Hot Topic and online stores I would say pentagrams are pretty widespread now. I know there was a music scene in the 70s that associated with that kind of thing, and the 80's 'Satan panic' years. I'd say the 90s with movies like The Craft it was pretty popular as well.
 
Other questions would be where on the skull was it glued? And also what direction of the star is the pentagon positioned?
 
aThousandYearsWide said:
This case is interesting. The medallion is a pentagram. With the time frame being that long ago I almost wonder if this was a grave robbing situation. With the pentagram I wonder what it is made out of like if it is costume jewelry or sterling. With Hot Topic and online stores I would say pentagrams are pretty widespread now. I know there was a music scene in the 70s that associated with that kind of thing, and the 80's 'Satan panic' years. I'd say the 90s with movies like The Craft it was pretty popular as well.
Click to expand...
I wanted to clarify after reading my post thought I sounded pretty dumb lol. I meant like bands like Coven and Pentagram (whom the lather I have actually seen in concert before). Of course there was also Black Sabbath too. That is around when dark and occult themes seemed to popularize in metal. The early 80s is when that really took off with the birth of Death and Black metal.
 
Bump. This was updated recently, any rule outs?

It's very likely a grave robbing situation like @aThousandYearsWide said. Sometimes old graves resurface due to floods, earthquakes etc, and people may find bones and think "finders keepers". I remember some controversy back in the mid-late 2000s over people selling cemetery bones online, so it's even possible she was originally buried far from the area where she was found.

Obviously if she died of natural causes and was given a legal burial, she wouldn't have been reported missing, so she may be difficult to identify. What a terrible shock it would be for her family members if they ever do identify her.
 
snowgoose said:
Bump. This was updated recently, any rule outs?

It's very likely a grave robbing situation like @aThousandYearsWide said. Sometimes old graves resurface due to floods, earthquakes etc, and people may find bones and think "finders keepers". I remember some controversy back in the mid-late 2000s over people selling cemetery bones online, so it's even possible she was originally buried far from the area where she was found.

Obviously if she died of natural causes and was given a legal burial, she wouldn't have been reported missing, so she may be difficult to identify. What a terrible shock it would be for her family members if they ever do identify her.
Click to expand...

No public rule outs.
 
I did some looking on the address 683 Old Autaugaville Road in Prattville to see if the location where the body was found was near any cemetery, which could corroborate the grave robbing theory.

Although the location may not be precise on Google Maps, it appears that the body was found on a road next to an active country club. Not an expert, but I would assume that a golf course or country club is mowed frequently, possibly daily (correct me if I am wrong).

Point being: I do not think this body could have been in this particular location for too long. This portion of Old Autaugaville road looks decently trafficked (street view has a car driving on it). Of course it could have been covered up by the trees or brush if it were on the opposite side of the country club.

Although I agree that this is could be a case of grave robbery or body snatching, could it be possible that the victim was murdered and her murderer(s) glued the medallion to the skull as some sort of signature later on?

It is also worth noting the distinction between grave robbery and body snatching. Grave robbery does not involve stealing the actual corpse itself, while body snatching does not include stealing the decedent's belongings. Both practices have been exceptionally rare in the U.S. since the early 20th century, and body snatching was primarily used for medical research and dissections of recently-buried bodies.

Just an odd case. Does anybody have any insight to the significance of this particular medallion? I can only imagine that the medallion must be some sort of message intended for whoever found her body.
 
PorterFitzgerald said:
I did some looking on the address 683 Old Autaugaville Road in Prattville to see if the location where the body was found was near any cemetery, which could corroborate the grave robbing theory.

Although the location may not be precise on Google Maps, it appears that the body was found on a road next to an active country club. Not an expert, but I would assume that a golf course or country club is mowed frequently, possibly daily (correct me if I am wrong).

Point being: I do not think this body could have been in this particular location for too long. This portion of Old Autaugaville road looks decently trafficked (street view has a car driving on it). Of course it could have been covered up by the trees or brush if it were on the opposite side of the country club.

Although I agree that this is could be a case of grave robbery or body snatching, could it be possible that the victim was murdered and her murderer(s) glued the medallion to the skull as some sort of signature later on?

It is also worth noting the distinction between grave robbery and body snatching. Grave robbery does not involve stealing the actual corpse itself, while body snatching does not include stealing the decedent's belongings. Both practices have been exceptionally rare in the U.S. since the early 20th century, and body snatching was primarily used for medical research and dissections of recently-buried bodies.

Just an odd case. Does anybody have any insight to the significance of this particular medallion? I can only imagine that the medallion must be some sort of message intended for whoever found her body.
Click to expand...

The medallion is a pentagram, which is mostly used as a religious symbol by Wiccans and other pagans. It looks like there are moons and stars in the circle around it. To me it looks like a cheap piece of jewelry that you could buy at any store that sells New Age religious items or Gothic fashion, especially in the 90s/early 2000s.

If this skull was taken from a cemetery, you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be found near a cemetery: it was probably put on display or used in some ritual before being discarded.

I imagine some young person with an interest in paganism finds a skull in a cemetery after a flood or earthquake, they think "oh cool, I've always wanted a human skull", take it home and glue a pentagram medallion on it. Maybe they place it in a shrine next to some candles etc. (I'm not saying this is a normal practice for pagans; most would be horrified by treating human remains with such disrespect.)

Later they grow up a bit and realise that was a dumb thing to do, but they don't know how to dispose of the skull properly and they're afraid of getting in trouble. They throw it out the car window on a quiet road, and here we are today, wondering how it got there.

Of course we can't rule out that she was a murder victim but I find that much more unlikely. The murderer waited years for the body to skeletonise and/or went through the whole difficult process of removing the flesh from the skull...only to glue some cheap jewelry on it and leave it by a golf course?
 
snowgoose said:
The medallion is a pentagram, which is mostly used as a religious symbol by Wiccans and other pagans. It looks like there are moons and stars in the circle around it. To me it looks like a cheap piece of jewelry that you could buy at any store that sells New Age religious items or Gothic fashion, especially in the 90s/early 2000s.

If this skull was taken from a cemetery, you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be found near a cemetery: it was probably put on display or used in some ritual before being discarded.

I imagine some young person with an interest in paganism finds a skull in a cemetery after a flood or earthquake, they think "oh cool, I've always wanted a human skull", take it home and glue a pentagram medallion on it. Maybe they place it in a shrine next to some candles etc. (I'm not saying this is a normal practice for pagans; most would be horrified by treating human remains with such disrespect.)

Later they grow up a bit and realise that was a dumb thing to do, but they don't know how to dispose of the skull properly and they're afraid of getting in trouble. They throw it out the car window on a quiet road, and here we are today, wondering how it got there.

Of course we can't rule out that she was a murder victim but I find that much more unlikely. The murderer waited years for the body to skeletonise and/or went through the whole difficult process of removing the flesh from the skull...only to glue some cheap jewelry on it and leave it by a golf course?
Click to expand...
Great points, however I hesitate to believe that somebody who would take a human skull would feel such shame and regret over what they did that they would toss the skull out on a road where it could easily be discovered. Wouldn't it be much easier to bury it where nobody else would find it, and not on a road in the middle of town?

Then again, I have no clue what they were thinking to begin with.

I wonder if there were multiple people involved. I think a bunch of kids finding a skull at a cemetery and then gluing jewelry to it, then freaking out and tossing it out of their window is more likely than one person going through the same thought process on their own.

Your theory does seem much more plausible than a possible murder. Perhaps this was an older cemetery that was not closely maintained? If there was such extreme weather that somebody's skull came up from the ground, wouldn't there be other disturbances across the entire cemetery?
 
@Caring1 Hey could you post the current list of NamUs exclusions for this Jane Doe? I would greatly appreciate it.
 
there's been some weird social media drama over the past 10 or so years of people "finding" washed-up skeleton remnants near old graveyards and taking them in for internet-wicca purposes (google 'tumblr graverobbing',) and as far as I know that was an idea inherited from '90s-'00s online wicca/occult spaces. I've seen a few '80s zine pages that espouse similar ideas so, with how blatant and tacky the medallion decoration is, I would be willing to bet that this was a skull taken from a poorly-maintained cemetery that someone took home to be an edgy teen with.

Sadly, the location of the skull in a deep-south state and the estimation that it was a black woman give me even more inclination to believe that it may have come from a neglected burial ground. Just my opinion, of course.
 
Here is a list of African American women between the ages of 40-60, who disappeared from AL prior to the date this UID was discovered (list is ordered from earliest to most recent disappearance date).

Sarah Hill
Brenda Dearing
Jenett King
Nancy Lewis
Gail Franklin
Tonya Mcmillian
 
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