GBI crime lab hopes to ID boxes of mysterious remains

<p>Some 200 plain cardboard boxes are stacked neatly on metal shelves in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's headquarters. Each holds what remains of a human being, some dating back to 1969.</p><p>Rick Snow, a GBI forensic anthropologist, was hired two years ago to analyze and categorize the bones to ID the dead. It's part of the agency's effort to clean up more than 1 million pieces of evidence, said Vernon Keenan, GBI director.</p><p>While the GBI has returned some evidence to local law enforcement agencies, there was no formal plan on dealing with the unidentified remains.</p><p>The GBI has since secured an $87,390 federal grant to help fund the effort to go through each box and enter information about their contents into a database.</p><p>"No one paid much attention to them until the advent of DNA technology," said Dr. Mark Koponen, the GBI's deputy chief medical examiner. "So that sort of changed the ballgame."</p><p>The grant helped pay Snow's salary for a year and financed a computer, a Global Position System unit, a digital camera and other tools.</p><p>He needs the equipment to help catalogue the more than 20 unidentified bodies found in Georgia each year. Many are found during the fall hunting season, when hunters scouring the woods stumble upon skeletal remains. Pets, construction workers, timber workers and curious children also occasionally find the bones.</p><p>Most can be identified within 12 months, but the rest are stored in a supply closet in the GBI's crime lab.</p><p>Last week, investigators used the information to solve a 20-year-old missing persons case.</p><p>Stephen Daniel was 27 when he disappeared in January 1985. In September 1996, authorities found a skeleton in a Stockbridge rock quarry. Snow sent the remains to a lab to extract a DNA sample, which matched with a swab taken from Daniel's mother.</p><p>Investigators concluded that Daniel apparently fell into the quarry, though it's not clear why.</p><p>"It is gratifying to the GBI when we can identify and return remains to family members," Keenan said. "We hope that by using the latest technology in our identification efforts, we will have other success stories as this project continues."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cdc218)</p>

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