Here is something found in an article I just got via email from the lady at the paper: This man thinks the victim was a woman he toured.....but, the ME is 95% sure it's a male.....by the sound of it, maybe this woman was casing the place out??
Richard Severson still wonders if the person found inside a Georgia-Pacific chimney 19 years ago was a woman he guided through the steam plant at Western Washington University.
Odds are the victim was a man, based on a doctor's examination of the charred skeleton and on burned remnants of masculine-style clothing.
During the woman's tour of the campus plant, she asked to climb inside a boiler, and went inside an inactive boiler several times, said Severson, 77, a steam engineer who retired from Western in 1993. Partly to encourage her to leave, he mentioned the waterfront plant with boilers that's visible from campus, presuming that G-P was secure from intruders. Not long afterward, a few weeks to a few months, Severson read news reports of the skeleton's discovery.
"I still feel a little bit responsible," he said.
Robert Gibb, who studied the remains as deputy medical examiner, is confident the victim was male. His autopsy report includes numerous measurements of the intact, blackened pelvis.
Studying the pelvis is a standard way to distinguish between skeletons of men and women. A woman's pelvis is broader and lighter than a man's, with a wider pelvic cavity.
One medical authority puts the accuracy of determining sex using the pelvis at 95 percent, which does leave some margin for error.
Severson, a stout, talkative fellow who lives on Lummi Reservation, says the white woman entered the campus steam plant during the summer or early fall, because the weather was warm and a door was open.
She was wiry, perhaps 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6 inches, and in her mid-30s to mid-40s, he said. She had light- to medium-brown hair that was cut short, and wore a lightweight lined windbreaker, a woven blouse, women's jeans and tennis shoes, possibly blue, he said.
She entered the steam plant and smiled, but didn't speak first, Severson recalled.
"I said, `Do you want a tour?'"
She nodded yes, so he showed her the boilers, controls and pumps on the main floor. When they came to a small boiler that was operating, she asked "Can I go in there?"
To make her convinced that the boiler was running, he lifted her up so she could see the flames through a small window.
She again said she wanted to go inside, so Severson escorted her up some stairs to an entry into an inactive boiler. Curious to see what she would do, Severson opened the door and watched as she climbed inside and huddled atop some pipes.
She got out, and then went in and out of the boiler another four to five times. He then asked her to leave.
Severson said he went to police headquarters, then in City Hall, after seeing news stories about the skeleton. He said he talked with two policemen, whom he presumed to be a detective and another officer, about the woman, but they didn't show much interest because doctors had decided the victim was a man.
