WA WA- Bay Center (unc), UnkUnk, adolescent, UP96191, skull received from University of Washington. believed found Sept 1980.

[cheemsg]

From what I can gather, the skull of a juvenile was sent to presumably the King County Medical Examiner's office from the University of Washington's sheriff's office.
The skull was in a box stamped with the date September 9, 1980 and a postmark from Bay Center, WA.
Apparently, a citizen found the skull around this time and handed it to the university rather than the police.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

 

[iamshadow21]

From what I can gather, the skull of a juvenile was sent to presumably the King County Medical Examiner's office from the University of Washington's sheriff's office.
The skull was in a box stamped with the date September 9, 1980 and a postmark from Bay Center, WA.
Apparently, a citizen found the skull around this time and handed it to the university rather than the police.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

I wonder if the person who submitted it to the university though it was ancient, First Nations remains, and the university got around to having a look, and based on either the skull condition or morphology, went, 'oop, no, this is recent', and sent it on to the cops.

Hard to sleuth. The skull could have been found a week before the uni received it, or found in old grandpa's attic decades after it was originally found, and sent on by living relatives. And if it was sent in to the uni in 1980, there's a good chance the sender will be elderly or not around to ask further questions of, by now. What a mess.

I guess if they actually have the skull, though, then DNA testing is a possibility, unlike cases where remains have been cremated or lost. And hopefully, the university storage kept it in decent condition. Even if it was just in a cardboard box on a shelf, so long as it was kept cool, dry, and free from mould, it'll hopefully be in better shape than a lot of remains that have been exhumed and successfully tested recently, like Joseph Zarelli, Ruth Terry, and Kenneth Williams, all of whom proved incredibly challenging for the folks at @othram (Terry and Williams) and Identifinders (Zarelli).

 

[iamshadow21]

Seems too early for Ridgway. I just looked him up to refresh my memory, because I knew he preyed on at-risk teens and women. I knew some of his victims, they'd only found skulls, one skull was found miles from the rest of the body, and I knew he'd admitted he'd moved some of his victims, looks like it was from Seattle to Portland, to confuse investigators. This skull was found roughly halfway between, looking at the map. But it's a few years too early for his known activity at the time it was donated. Add a few more years, at least, on top of that for it to look like an anthropological specimen, not a murder victim, and it's early to mid seventies, if not even earlier. Worth a Wikipedia dive, because I think there are more victims of his out there that haven't been found, but I don't think he's connected to this one.

 

[cheemsg]

I wonder if the person who submitted it to the university though it was ancient, First Nations remains, and the university got around to having a look, and based on either the skull condition or morphology, went, 'oop, no, this is recent', and sent it on to the cops.

Hard to sleuth. The skull could have been found a week before the uni received it, or found in old grandpa's attic decades after it was originally found, and sent on by living relatives. And if it was sent in to the uni in 1980, there's a good chance the sender will be elderly or not around to ask further questions of, by now. What a mess.

I guess if they actually have the skull, though, then DNA testing is a possibility, unlike cases where remains have been cremated or lost. And hopefully, the university storage kept it in decent condition. Even if it was just in a cardboard box on a shelf, so long as it was kept cool, dry, and free from mould, it'll hopefully be in better shape than a lot of remains that have been exhumed and successfully tested recently, like Joseph Zarelli, Ruth Terry, and Kenneth Williams, all of whom proved incredibly challenging for the folks at @othram (Terry and Williams) and Identifinders (Zarelli).

Yes, exactly. From the page, it looks like they know about the intial discovery, a lot of similar cases like this say they don't know where/when it was first found at all but they seem pretty confident about the citizen finding it and handed it to the UW. So I guess they know more about the circumstances than they've put on the NamUs page but I absolutely agree. I wish we knew *where* exactly he found it, like wooded area? Lake? Under the house?

Another issue is it's a partial skull by the looks of it, which I think should complicate things.

 

[iamshadow21]

Yes, exactly. From the page, it looks like they know about the intial discovery, a lot of similar cases like this say they don't know where/when it was first found at all but they seem pretty confident about the citizen finding it and handed it to the UW. So I guess they know more about the circumstances than they've put on the NamUs page but I absolutely agree. I wish we knew *where* exactly he found it, like wooded area? Lake? Under the house?

Another issue is it's a partial skull by the looks of it, which I think should complicate things.

The drop pin on the map from Namus is right on the water, so I guess it being washed up is possible, too, but I know the drop pins on those maps are rarely accurate, I've seen folks griping about that in the threads before. There'll be a known location named in the file or in a media report, and the pin is miles away, in another part of town or off in the woods when the body was found on a street corner.

 

[the_missing]

I wonder if the person who submitted it to the university though it was ancient, First Nations remains, and the university got around to having a look, and based on either the skull condition or morphology, went, 'oop, no, this is recent', and sent it on to the cops.

The obvious first thing to do here is radiometric dating - C-14 dating of bone only costs a couple of hundred bucks these days.

 

[cheemsg]

No update yet

 

[djanga]

This Doe is a probably a new Dna Doe Project case, they haven’t made yet an announcement but it looks like they added Pacific County Child Doe from Washington to their new cases map. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon. Pacific county has only one case in Namus

 

[djanga]

I have double checked it and it is definitely the same Doe. Pacific County Child Doe 1980 appears on the DDP’s pending cases list on their new dashboard. They are now “at lab for extraction” . I hope the extraction will go smooth and fast, as we don’t know how they were in the water prior to being found.

 

[iamshadow21]

I have double checked it and it is definitely the same Doe. Pacific County Child Doe 1980 appears on the DDP’s pending cases list on their new dashboard. They are now “at lab for extraction” . I hope the extraction will go smooth and fast, as we don’t know how they were in the water prior to being found.

Was this skull in the water? I thought it was posted to a university in the eighties.

 

[OddOneOut]

I remember reading of cases where bones were sent to a university for testing and then lost. I wonder if that could be the case here?

 

[iamshadow21]

I remember reading of cases where bones were sent to a university for testing and then lost. I wonder if that could be the case here?

This is a case where a civilian found a skull and posted it to a university, probably thinking it was ancient remains. It wasn't. When the university checked it out and realised, they passed it over to the police.

 

[djanga]

Was this skull in the water? I thought it was posted to a university in the eighties.

You are right! I thought I read somewhere that the skull was found ashore, but you are right, the description does not mention where exactly and at which circumstances the skull was found:

Juvenile calvarium submitted from the University of Washington Department of Anthropology as a cold case. The remains were found inside a box dated 9/9/1980 with a postmark from Bay Center. It is believed a citizen found the calvarium and submitted it to UW directly.

 

[Melt71]

I have double checked it and it is definitely the same Doe. Pacific County Child Doe 1980 appears on the DDP’s pending cases list on their new dashboard. They are now “at lab for extraction” . I hope the extraction will go smooth and fast, as we don’t know how they were in the water prior to being found.

She now shows as an Active case on the DDP list.

 

[Melt71]

This case is still showing as Research in Progress.