October 8, 2025 • 31 mins
In Illinois, a DIY home renovation uncovered a human skull hidden inside a wall. When the case went cold, the remains sat for decades on a museum office shelf, forgotten and unidentified. Years later, a staffer’s rediscovery gave investigators a second chance. Using forensic DNA technology, they finally uncovered the identity of Esther Granger, and the mystery of how her skull ended up in a family home.
America’s Crime Lab is a true crime podcast about how science solves cold cases, missing persons, and other unsolved cases. Hosted by journalist and clinical psychologist Elin Lantz Lesser, and powered by Othram’s forensic DNA lab, the show connects the science to the story, revealing what really happens in the lab and why it matters.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
My wife called me and she said, I got this
phone call, and I said, oh my god, Marge, what
did you tell them?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
How much have you told them?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
She was telling me was that there were some bones
that were found in a wall in a house. I said,
that sounds like just such a scam.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Investigating a cold case is challenging. Often the crime scene
evidence is damaged or contaminated, witnesses may have died, and
police reports are sometimes lost, and then there are inexplicable mysteries.
In the past, I'd always thought human remains were found
(01:00):
pretty soon after a crime, or if it takes a while,
that they're found in secluded spots, like in the woods
off a main road or in a field behind a barn.
But what if there remains sitting right next to you
for years? They could be anywhere at your office and
(01:20):
a friend's backyard, or maybe in your own home. Producer
Catherine Fenalosa is here with one of the oldest unidentified
human remains cases ever to be solved.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
This case takes place outside of Chicago, and it's nineteen
seventy eight. Okay, so you got to go back a bit,
and there's a couple, James and Martha Skinner, and they've
rented this house, and it's a cute house. I actually
looked it up. Then it's a shingled house, two stories
with a little picket fence. It's in a little town
(01:58):
called Batavia. And even though they're renting this house, they
decide to do some renovations. It's a Sunday. They are
taking down the baseboard and part of a wall, and
Martha starts to notice that things are falling out of
the wall and hitting the floor. First she notices a
(02:22):
corn cob, which is like a little.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Weird right, like an ear of corn.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yes, an ear of corn. But the house was built
in the eighteen fifties, so it's not totally out of
the norm for people to have like stuffed things in
the walls as insulation. So then five shoes, not pairs
of shoes, but just five individual shoes, a couple of
old bottles, and then a woman's bonnet, a black bonnet,
(02:53):
so picture like a cotton hat that you would tie
under the chind. This bonnet is fairly old. And then.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
A jaw bone, like a human jaw bone.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Martha Skinner says, and I went back and read the
newspaper article that was written at the time. Martha Skinner says,
the second the jawbone hit the ground, I knew it
was human, and she freaks out. So they pull a
little more of the wall apart and part of a
human skull falls down. So at this point Martha and
(03:34):
James are completely freaked out and they call the police.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, my immediate thought would be like serial killer, you know.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So that was on their minds. So they call the police.
The police come and they bring a cadaver dog with them,
and the police officers lead the dog around the house
and the dog doesn't stop and show interest in any
other spots of the house, just this one particular area
of the wall, and they determine that's it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I just think that if I found human remains in
my wall, first of all, I would not be able
to sleep that night. Second of all, I would be like,
am I in danger?
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
If I bring these remain to the police. Will someone
come in here in the middle of the night and
try to take other evidence out of the walls? You
don't know who knows about the remains, where they're from,
what crime was involved, what the motive was.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Martha did admit that she was worried that a murder
had happened in the house.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I mean, obviously a crime was involved if there are
human remains in a wall.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There are photos from that Sunday when they take down
part of this wall and you can see Martha down
on the ground looking at all of the you know,
the bottles and the shoes that have fallen to the floor.
(05:07):
And her first thought was exactly the same as yours. Alan,
I mean, she was like, Oh, my god, did a
serial killer live here? Like, are we living in the
middle of a crime scene and we had no idea?
Oh and are there other bodies buried in this house?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
What a nightmare. I would need to get a hotel.
I would get out of there. Oh my goodness, I know.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So the police do their investigation, they look through their
missing person reports and it's not leading them anywhere, so
they actually reach out to one of the top forensic
anthropologists at the time. His name is doctor Clyde snow
And Alan, this guy is a really big deal. He
worked on serial killer John Wayne Gacy's case. He examined
(05:50):
JFK's remains and even toot in common the Egyptian pharaoh
from three thousand years ago, and so Snow determines that
this skull is really old. It probably belonged to a
white female. He's thinking someone like sixteen to eighteen years
old who died before nineteen hundred. So this skull is
(06:14):
at least say ninety four years old by the time
they find it.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
How many different people have lived there, just eating their
dinner next to this body in the wall. What a
horrifying thought.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
They list this as a Jane Doe case, and they
decide to ship the skull to the local history museum
in town, and the case goes cold. So that's nineteen
seventy eight. Fast forward to twenty twenty one. There is
(06:51):
an employee who works at this history museum in Batavia, Illinois,
and she's cleaning out an office and there is a
box and she opens the box and she is shocked
to find parts of a skull in this box. Yeah,
so she freaks.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Out yet again. This person their remains are just getting
moved around to random locations, and we still don't know
even who it is or how they died.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
We have no idea. She calls the police, and the
police again look through their records and they realize that
these are the same exact remains that were found in
this house. So they take them back and the case
is officially reopened.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Finally. It's actually kind of miraculous that after all that
it does get reopened.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
I know.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
So this box with the skull lands on the desk
of Gabriella Allison. She's an investigator in the cold case
unit of the Kane County Corner's Office in Illinois, and
ailan she's actually the perfect person to look into this
case because it really hits home for her.
Speaker 6 (08:03):
My grandfather was murdered and basically everybody knew what happened,
but nobody investigated. The police knew, everybody knew, and unfortunately
my grandma she really just kind of had to move
away and not know anything as to, you know, having
any justice for his case. So for me, it's obviously
(08:26):
about the families and if I can help families get
some answers in a way of maybe giving back to
my family in some sort of you know way.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Oh my god, And she basically promises herself that even
though this case seems unsolvable, we owe it to whoever
this person is to give them a name. This can't
stay as a Jane Doe. The information that she had
to go on was that this skull probably along to
(09:00):
a young woman, you know, sixteen to eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And this was a person who lived and had a name,
had a family, had a life story.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yeah, and they wanted to put these remains to rest
and to understand who this person was and how they
ended up in the wall of a house, which is
also an incredible mystery in itself.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, because you know someone put them there. To be honest,
if I were a Gabriella, where would you even start.
I mean there's no one to talk to who was there,
who knows what happened. I mean, how could you possibly
know what to do?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I asked Gabriella that exact question. So she and the
corner at the time, a guy named Rob Russell, they
jump right in. They realized they're going to need help
since the only evidence they have to work with are
these skeletal remains, and with no other clues, it comes
down to get DNA from the skull, because without it,
(10:03):
this goes back to being a cold case.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Okay, so the best shot at solving this case rests
on getting DNA from the skull.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Yes, Gabriella and Rob at the corner's office reach out
to authram and the lab agrees to take the case,
but first Alan they need Gabriella to ship them the
skull hang on.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
I know we've talked about a number of cases at
this point, and they've all had to send incredibly valuable
evidence to Authroom's lab, But I gotta admit I'm fascinated
with what happens behind the scenes. I mean, this can't
be like shipping a birthday present to a friend or wait,
(10:59):
is it.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
So it's kind of wild. It's both highly orchestrated and
shockingly simple at the same time. So I visited the
Authroom offices a while back, and basically every morning a
similar scene plays out.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
I had to detail the type of package that I received,
who I got it from, and then had to detail
the time and day that I got it.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
That's Raina Ramirez. She's the first person you meet when
walking into the Authroom offices. She's at her desk, bright
and early, and pretty immediately trucks start rolling in. There's FedEx, ups,
DHL and the post office.
Speaker 8 (11:40):
One two, three, four, six.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
And on this day, six cardboard packages are quickly stacked
on Reina's desk.
Speaker 8 (11:50):
It all depends how I was shipped equally Express Priority
or just a regular delivery. So those typically get here
in the afternoon, but if it was Priori, they'll be
here before seven o'clock in the morning. If they are
going to be FedEx expressed, they'll be here between nine
to eleven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
So this is where crime scene evidence lands when it's
shipped from state crime labs and police departments.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Yeah, and packages hold human remains like this job, but
it could also be vials of blood, teeth, scraps of
blood stained clothing, really anything with DNA.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
The first step is to inspect and make sure that
it's not open or any damage at all. Then I
take pictures of all sides of the box and angles. Again,
what are making sure that there's no tampering with the evidence.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Raina quickly enters the information into a database and the
boxes are taken into an evidence room.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Do the delivery drivers know what they're delivering.
Speaker 8 (13:00):
So they're more regular ones. They know what they're bringing
because they've been seeing us on TV or stuff like that.
Like all these package is Priority needs to go to
ATUM and typically they don't like to miss my route
because of their snacks.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Raina's got tons of snacks dashed behind her desk. She's
got bottles of gatorade and cold water, bags of chips
and cookies. She wants to make Authrum their first delivery
stop of the day.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
She's a smart woman. I mean these packages are priceless.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Really yeah, And she says, the drivers are really part
of this work.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
They're amazing. There's one particular FedEx guy that he was
amazed by our Christmas tree.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
So every winter Authorum puts up a tree in the
lobby and instead of ornaments, they hang pictures of victims
whose cases they've solved.
Speaker 8 (13:53):
And when he saw the pictures, he's like, it makes
me proud that, in a tiny part, I'm part of
that salut.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Oh wow. So I have to ask, does NA know
what's inside every box that lands on her desk?
Speaker 8 (14:08):
I don't. On my end, I try to avoid even
focusing on who's the center. I feel like the less
I know, the better I guess subconsciously protect myself. I
don't know, but my part, it's concentrating on the tracking number.
(14:28):
That's all I need to know. I don't need to
know anything else. That's for the scientists. That have to
do the magic.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Good for her, but honestly, I'd be so curious to
know what evidence was inside. So back to Gabriella in
the Kane County Corner's office.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Yeah, so Authurne just told her, Hey, ship us the
skull that was found in the wall of the house
and we'll see what we can find out about it.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
Yeah, I just put it in a box and ship
it to us, and I'm like, do you know what
you're asking me? So we packed it up, you know,
lots of bubble wrap, and then I'll never forget when
I was at the FedEx, I'm like, the person was
asking me the value of it, and I'm like, uh, yeah, right,
but I wrote like fragile all over it. I'm like,
(15:20):
please be really careful. You know, you're just kind of
like freaking out because obviously if something happens to it,
I mean, you've lost your taste and you've lost human remains,
which would not be good.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Gabriella did a great job packing up the skull because
it arrives undamaged, and after Raina enters it into their
chain of custody, it's unpacked and examined in the lab.
Now this is a highly controlled environment. Forensic scientists wear
head to toe white coveralls with gloves and goggles. And
the day I visited, a technician had a human leg
(15:58):
bone laid out on a table.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Oh, it's like a sci fi movie or something.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Yeah, And Kristin Middleman of Authorham explains what happens next.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
Here we are in the bone room. So this is
a human bone, and you can see here she has
the measuring tape out and she's this is an unidentified
remains case. You can see that the remains are pretty
old because you can see all that classification and stuff
on the outside.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Where were you watching from? Were you in the room
with the bone?
Speaker 4 (16:33):
So we weren't in the room because it's such a
highly controlled environment. But we're standing just outside of the
bone room, which has floor to ceiling glass.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
And so what she's going to do now is she's
going to label and photograph all of this and then
she's going to drill into that bone and get a
small amount of the interior of the bone so that
the DNA can be extracted. And once she does that,
and she's linda it right now so you can watch it.
(17:06):
She's going to take that part of the bone and
solubilize it in a solution and then start to extract
the DNA and that's when it goes back into the
DNA extraction room.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
I can hear the sound of the drill.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Yeah, and it sort of looks like if you were
to drill through a piece of pottery, like there's some
dust coming up. Once the technician is done, the bone
samples are run through custom built machines and software that
identify hundreds of thousands of DNA markers. All of these
are tiny clues as to who this person is.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
So I'm guessing this is the same thing that happens
to the skull gabriellasent. And once the DNA is extracted,
what happens because we need a name, like who does
this skull belong to?
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Yeah, exactly, And that's where authrm's team of genetic genealogists come.
Speaker 9 (18:00):
Men, my name is Carla Davis, and I am the
chief genetic genealogist at AUTHRON.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Carla Davis and her team take the genetic profile that's
been generated and they start building out family trees.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I'm fascinated by this part of the investigation, so I
was really excited to talk to Carla and ask her
how she got into this kind of work.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
I was born into it because I was born not
knowing who my father was, and that part of me
was always missing. It was as if there was a
hole in my heart. Right and DNA came on the scene.
So my first DNA test was on twenty three and
meter and at that time, I had like to eighth cousins.
(18:52):
I didn't know what to do with fifth to eighth cousins.
I didn't understand how DNA worked, and I didn't know
anyone on my list. Right, I'm like, oh, this is
not going to help. Then I took an ancestry DNA test.
I had a third cousin match, and I said, Okay,
I think I can do something with a third cousin match.
So I just started absorbing and learning anything and everything
(19:14):
that I could get my hands on. So how to
apply DNA evidence to genealogical research? And I'm like, I'm
on something here, and then I ended up identifying my
birth father.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
What was that like for you? Even emotionally?
Speaker 9 (19:28):
Oh my goodness, you know, it was like if you
look at a picture and you tear it in half,
you only see half of that person. You don't see
the other half.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It's just.
Speaker 9 (19:38):
Finding who he was, even though he had passed away
back in two thousand and five. And completed the picture
of who I.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Was, Carla learned that her dad was a truck driver
and an amateur race car driver, and that she was
his only child. And I should add that Carla's mom
died when she was five, so she grew up desperate
to know more about both of her parents. After that discovery,
Carla says she became kind of addicted to genealogy research
(20:05):
and she started helping adoptees who were looking for their
birth parents. She ends up solving over two hundred cases,
and before she knows it, strangers are emailing her asking
for her help.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
So when the Golden State Killer was announced, it was like,
I can apply what I know. So I knew that
this was this was going to be the future of
how perpetrators and unidentified human remains would be identified.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So how does she make the leap to working on
crime scene evidence?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, good question. I was curious about that too.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
For me, it really is personal because when my daughter
was ten years old, her friend was kidnapped and brutally
murdered and her body was thrown in the ravine in
your Orleans and it was devastating, not just to my daughter,
to myself, to the entire community. It was as if
time stopped until she was found.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
What did that mean to that community?
Speaker 9 (21:08):
She was just our house, just the weekend prior to
her being taken. I didn't want my daughter going outside
to play anymore. I was scared to death for that.
When a person is taken and they go missing, it's
not just their family that suffers. Is such a larger scale. Yeah,
(21:28):
So to get them home and give everyone answers. I
don't think anyone has closure, but somehow it's information that
will allow them to hopefully heal. That should be our mission.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I wanted to talk about the case of the human
skull found in the wall of the house you worked
on that.
Speaker 9 (21:54):
One of the things that caught my attention was this
person died before for nineteen hundred, This could be one
of the oldest cases that author them solves, And sure enough,
it was one of the oldest cases that we have
solved to date.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
What was challenging about the case.
Speaker 9 (22:13):
So, if you've ever taken a consumer DNA test, once
your results are complete, you are given a list of
names that are your genetic relatives, and in this case,
the most recent common ancestors dated back to the late
seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
So we had to use historical records, census records, birth certificates,
birth records, death announcements, death records, military records, whatever we
can use to identify each generation.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
In this case, Carla is able to track down ancestors
a couple who had six kids, and based on the DNA,
she thinks the skull belongs to one of the six kids.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
So after almost two hundred years, there are only six
people that these bones could belong to.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Two two sons, and four daughters. One daughter had died
when she was eight years old. Two of the other
daughters lived full lives and they had died and were
buried in Nebraska. But there was one daughter that really
we were focused on, and that was Esther. Esther was
born in eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
So now you have to confirm Esther's identity with one
of her living relatives.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
So I mentioned that Esther had one daughter, so that
daughter had two children, So then we identified who those
children were, and then we got down to living people.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
At this point, Authoram gives Gabriella Allison at the Kane
County Corner's Office a short list of names because they
need one more DNA sample, and this time from someone
who's alive.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Well it started.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
My wife got a phone call and it was Gabriella
calling from the Kinge County Corner's office.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I was at work.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
My wife called me and she said, I got this
phone call. And I said, oh my god, Marge, that
sounds like just such a scam. My wife said, no,
you should call him back.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I think it's the real deal.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Wayne Swiller is a retiree living in Oregon, and he
listens to his wife and he calls Gabriella back, and
Gabriella begins to explain why she's calling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I interrupted her and I said, hey, I just got
to tell you right off the bat, I don't believe you.
This is just too incredible.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
And it turns out he's a former police officer who's
worked cold cases for decades.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh so maybe he's skeptical from experience.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, I mean he knows this call could be a scam.
Maybe like someone he put behind bars years ago is
trying to get back at him. But his wife is intrigued,
and she convinces him to give Gabriella a chance to explain.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
They knew the history of the whole case, and they
were so excited and committed that I thought, you can't
fake this. These guys are all in and I've got
to help him out whatever I can do.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
It's ironic that, having investigated cold cases in the past,
now weans on the other end of the phone.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Yeah, and he knows how it feels for Gabriella to
make that call because he's done it so many times
himself in homicides and missing person cases.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You don't just work that job and then leave, do
You take that job with you because you get to
know the families. You get to know the victims. There's
mothers of some of these victims that will come down
to the precinct every year on the anniversary of their
son or daughter's death and just check in and see
if there's been any new developments. I mean, you're talk
(26:01):
in twenty years after their loved one has been killed,
and it made it really personal. That's more than a
job that walks around with you.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I'm guessing Wayne agrees to give some of his DNA.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Yeah, he gives what's called a DNA reference swab, which
is really just a quick swab from the inside of
his cheek.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Is it a match?
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:26):
It turns out that Esther Ann Granger is Wayne's great
great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Oh my god, that's so cool. So now that we
have a name, what do we know about her?
Speaker 4 (26:38):
She was born in Indiana in eighteen forty eight, and
she marries her husband, Charles, when she's sixteen. Esther becomes
pregnant pretty soon after that with her first child, but sadly,
she dies after giving birth to her daughter, who they
also named Esther.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Oh that's so sad. But that's so sweet that they
named her daughter after her. But I also wonder how
did her skull end up in the wall of a
home eighty miles away in Illinois? And where's the rest
of her body?
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, I know a lot of people have been wondering
about that. Gabriella and Rob have some ideas well.
Speaker 10 (27:17):
The running theory is that she was grave robbed. Her
body was sold to somebody, you know, a medical school
or individual who was a broker. Kind of gross to
talk about, but a broker of body parts. We don't
know if she was sold as a whole, or if
they parted it out and sold it to different types
(27:40):
of schools.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
We also know the first home owner that had the
house built. He was a doctor. He died soon after that,
and his son stayed and lived there and he was
a surgeon. How she actually got in the wall, I
don't know that we'll ever know.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
So we don't know if the rest of Uster's body
is so in that house.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
We don't. But remember the cadaver dog didn't smell anything,
and police back then didn't have any reasons really to
take apart any more of the walls, So maybe we
won't ever know.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
What about Wayne, what does he do with Esther's skull?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
So officials in Batavia, Illinois, where Esther's remains were found,
offered to cremate the skull and inter her ashes in
the local cemetery, and Wayne traveled to be there.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I think in some ways my reaction surprised me. I've
been really a private person. It was just that wave
of emotions that I never got to meet her, and
kind of I guess sadness about how we got to
where we were, but also just the emotion of closure
(28:57):
and the respect that she deserved and wishing that she
had a different path right, sad that she had died
at such a young age, and then the way that
her remains retreated in the process. And I don't blame
anybody for that. From almost the beginning, I felt like
this story needed to be told. Your life makes a
(29:20):
difference the people you touch it made a difference, and
it needs to be acknowledged.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It strikes me that solving this case not only gives
esther back her identity, but it fills in some of
Wayne's family history, connecting him to ancestors he didn't even
know existed.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
And it's a case with no eyewitnesses, no clues. I mean,
there's not even a crime scene to investigate, and it
all came down to DNA to solve a mystery from
one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Next Time on America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
Received a nine one one call from a neighbor. When
they answered the door, they found her in nothing but
a blood soaked T shirt.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
You know what it looks like.
Speaker 10 (30:10):
There's another case in another state that it also has
unknown DNA that.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Is the same.
Speaker 11 (30:17):
You know, then, I'm really excited. Now we have a
potential suspect.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fenalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our Executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hattigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(30:47):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne,
Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at AUTHRM. I'm Ailen Lance Lesser.
Thanks for listening.
My wife called me and she said, I got this
phone call, and I said, oh my god, Marge, what
did you tell them?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
How much have you told them?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
She was telling me was that there were some bones
that were found in a wall in a house. I said,
that sounds like just such a scam.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Investigating a cold case is challenging. Often the crime scene
evidence is damaged or contaminated, witnesses may have died, and
police reports are sometimes lost, and then there are inexplicable mysteries.
In the past, I'd always thought human remains were found
(01:00):
pretty soon after a crime, or if it takes a while,
that they're found in secluded spots, like in the woods
off a main road or in a field behind a barn.
But what if there remains sitting right next to you
for years? They could be anywhere at your office and
(01:20):
a friend's backyard, or maybe in your own home. Producer
Catherine Fenalosa is here with one of the oldest unidentified
human remains cases ever to be solved.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
This case takes place outside of Chicago, and it's nineteen
seventy eight. Okay, so you got to go back a bit,
and there's a couple, James and Martha Skinner, and they've
rented this house, and it's a cute house. I actually
looked it up. Then it's a shingled house, two stories
with a little picket fence. It's in a little town
(01:58):
called Batavia. And even though they're renting this house, they
decide to do some renovations. It's a Sunday. They are
taking down the baseboard and part of a wall, and
Martha starts to notice that things are falling out of
the wall and hitting the floor. First she notices a
(02:22):
corn cob, which is like a little.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Weird right, like an ear of corn.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yes, an ear of corn. But the house was built
in the eighteen fifties, so it's not totally out of
the norm for people to have like stuffed things in
the walls as insulation. So then five shoes, not pairs
of shoes, but just five individual shoes, a couple of
old bottles, and then a woman's bonnet, a black bonnet,
(02:53):
so picture like a cotton hat that you would tie
under the chind. This bonnet is fairly old. And then.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
A jaw bone, like a human jaw bone.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Martha Skinner says, and I went back and read the
newspaper article that was written at the time. Martha Skinner says,
the second the jawbone hit the ground, I knew it
was human, and she freaks out. So they pull a
little more of the wall apart and part of a
human skull falls down. So at this point Martha and
(03:34):
James are completely freaked out and they call the police.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, my immediate thought would be like serial killer, you know.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So that was on their minds. So they call the police.
The police come and they bring a cadaver dog with them,
and the police officers lead the dog around the house
and the dog doesn't stop and show interest in any
other spots of the house, just this one particular area
of the wall, and they determine that's it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I just think that if I found human remains in
my wall, first of all, I would not be able
to sleep that night. Second of all, I would be like,
am I in danger?
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
If I bring these remain to the police. Will someone
come in here in the middle of the night and
try to take other evidence out of the walls? You
don't know who knows about the remains, where they're from,
what crime was involved, what the motive was.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Martha did admit that she was worried that a murder
had happened in the house.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I mean, obviously a crime was involved if there are
human remains in a wall.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There are photos from that Sunday when they take down
part of this wall and you can see Martha down
on the ground looking at all of the you know,
the bottles and the shoes that have fallen to the floor.
(05:07):
And her first thought was exactly the same as yours. Alan,
I mean, she was like, Oh, my god, did a
serial killer live here? Like, are we living in the
middle of a crime scene and we had no idea?
Oh and are there other bodies buried in this house?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
What a nightmare. I would need to get a hotel.
I would get out of there. Oh my goodness, I know.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So the police do their investigation, they look through their
missing person reports and it's not leading them anywhere, so
they actually reach out to one of the top forensic
anthropologists at the time. His name is doctor Clyde snow
And Alan, this guy is a really big deal. He
worked on serial killer John Wayne Gacy's case. He examined
(05:50):
JFK's remains and even toot in common the Egyptian pharaoh
from three thousand years ago, and so Snow determines that
this skull is really old. It probably belonged to a
white female. He's thinking someone like sixteen to eighteen years
old who died before nineteen hundred. So this skull is
(06:14):
at least say ninety four years old by the time
they find it.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
How many different people have lived there, just eating their
dinner next to this body in the wall. What a
horrifying thought.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
They list this as a Jane Doe case, and they
decide to ship the skull to the local history museum
in town, and the case goes cold. So that's nineteen
seventy eight. Fast forward to twenty twenty one. There is
(06:51):
an employee who works at this history museum in Batavia, Illinois,
and she's cleaning out an office and there is a
box and she opens the box and she is shocked
to find parts of a skull in this box. Yeah,
so she freaks.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Out yet again. This person their remains are just getting
moved around to random locations, and we still don't know
even who it is or how they died.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
We have no idea. She calls the police, and the
police again look through their records and they realize that
these are the same exact remains that were found in
this house. So they take them back and the case
is officially reopened.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Finally. It's actually kind of miraculous that after all that
it does get reopened.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
I know.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
So this box with the skull lands on the desk
of Gabriella Allison. She's an investigator in the cold case
unit of the Kane County Corner's Office in Illinois, and
ailan she's actually the perfect person to look into this
case because it really hits home for her.
Speaker 6 (08:03):
My grandfather was murdered and basically everybody knew what happened,
but nobody investigated. The police knew, everybody knew, and unfortunately
my grandma she really just kind of had to move
away and not know anything as to, you know, having
any justice for his case. So for me, it's obviously
(08:26):
about the families and if I can help families get
some answers in a way of maybe giving back to
my family in some sort of you know way.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Oh my god, And she basically promises herself that even
though this case seems unsolvable, we owe it to whoever
this person is to give them a name. This can't
stay as a Jane Doe. The information that she had
to go on was that this skull probably along to
(09:00):
a young woman, you know, sixteen to eighteen years old.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
And this was a person who lived and had a name,
had a family, had a life story.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yeah, and they wanted to put these remains to rest
and to understand who this person was and how they
ended up in the wall of a house, which is
also an incredible mystery in itself.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, because you know someone put them there. To be honest,
if I were a Gabriella, where would you even start.
I mean there's no one to talk to who was there,
who knows what happened. I mean, how could you possibly
know what to do?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I asked Gabriella that exact question. So she and the
corner at the time, a guy named Rob Russell, they
jump right in. They realized they're going to need help
since the only evidence they have to work with are
these skeletal remains, and with no other clues, it comes
down to get DNA from the skull, because without it,
(10:03):
this goes back to being a cold case.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Okay, so the best shot at solving this case rests
on getting DNA from the skull.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Yes, Gabriella and Rob at the corner's office reach out
to authram and the lab agrees to take the case,
but first Alan they need Gabriella to ship them the
skull hang on.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
I know we've talked about a number of cases at
this point, and they've all had to send incredibly valuable
evidence to Authroom's lab, But I gotta admit I'm fascinated
with what happens behind the scenes. I mean, this can't
be like shipping a birthday present to a friend or wait,
(10:59):
is it.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
So it's kind of wild. It's both highly orchestrated and
shockingly simple at the same time. So I visited the
Authroom offices a while back, and basically every morning a
similar scene plays out.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
I had to detail the type of package that I received,
who I got it from, and then had to detail
the time and day that I got it.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
That's Raina Ramirez. She's the first person you meet when
walking into the Authroom offices. She's at her desk, bright
and early, and pretty immediately trucks start rolling in. There's FedEx, ups,
DHL and the post office.
Speaker 8 (11:40):
One two, three, four, six.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
And on this day, six cardboard packages are quickly stacked
on Reina's desk.
Speaker 8 (11:50):
It all depends how I was shipped equally Express Priority
or just a regular delivery. So those typically get here
in the afternoon, but if it was Priori, they'll be
here before seven o'clock in the morning. If they are
going to be FedEx expressed, they'll be here between nine
to eleven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
So this is where crime scene evidence lands when it's
shipped from state crime labs and police departments.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Yeah, and packages hold human remains like this job, but
it could also be vials of blood, teeth, scraps of
blood stained clothing, really anything with DNA.
Speaker 8 (12:30):
The first step is to inspect and make sure that
it's not open or any damage at all. Then I
take pictures of all sides of the box and angles. Again,
what are making sure that there's no tampering with the evidence.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Raina quickly enters the information into a database and the
boxes are taken into an evidence room.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Do the delivery drivers know what they're delivering.
Speaker 8 (13:00):
So they're more regular ones. They know what they're bringing
because they've been seeing us on TV or stuff like that.
Like all these package is Priority needs to go to
ATUM and typically they don't like to miss my route
because of their snacks.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Raina's got tons of snacks dashed behind her desk. She's
got bottles of gatorade and cold water, bags of chips
and cookies. She wants to make Authrum their first delivery
stop of the day.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
She's a smart woman. I mean these packages are priceless.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Really yeah, And she says, the drivers are really part
of this work.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
They're amazing. There's one particular FedEx guy that he was
amazed by our Christmas tree.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
So every winter Authorum puts up a tree in the
lobby and instead of ornaments, they hang pictures of victims
whose cases they've solved.
Speaker 8 (13:53):
And when he saw the pictures, he's like, it makes
me proud that, in a tiny part, I'm part of
that salut.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Oh wow. So I have to ask, does NA know
what's inside every box that lands on her desk?
Speaker 8 (14:08):
I don't. On my end, I try to avoid even
focusing on who's the center. I feel like the less
I know, the better I guess subconsciously protect myself. I
don't know, but my part, it's concentrating on the tracking number.
(14:28):
That's all I need to know. I don't need to
know anything else. That's for the scientists. That have to
do the magic.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Good for her, but honestly, I'd be so curious to
know what evidence was inside. So back to Gabriella in
the Kane County Corner's office.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Yeah, so Authurne just told her, Hey, ship us the
skull that was found in the wall of the house
and we'll see what we can find out about it.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
Yeah, I just put it in a box and ship
it to us, and I'm like, do you know what
you're asking me? So we packed it up, you know,
lots of bubble wrap, and then I'll never forget when
I was at the FedEx, I'm like, the person was
asking me the value of it, and I'm like, uh, yeah, right,
but I wrote like fragile all over it. I'm like,
(15:20):
please be really careful. You know, you're just kind of
like freaking out because obviously if something happens to it,
I mean, you've lost your taste and you've lost human remains,
which would not be good.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Gabriella did a great job packing up the skull because
it arrives undamaged, and after Raina enters it into their
chain of custody, it's unpacked and examined in the lab.
Now this is a highly controlled environment. Forensic scientists wear
head to toe white coveralls with gloves and goggles. And
the day I visited, a technician had a human leg
(15:58):
bone laid out on a table.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Oh, it's like a sci fi movie or something.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Yeah, And Kristin Middleman of Authorham explains what happens next.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
Here we are in the bone room. So this is
a human bone, and you can see here she has
the measuring tape out and she's this is an unidentified
remains case. You can see that the remains are pretty
old because you can see all that classification and stuff
on the outside.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Where were you watching from? Were you in the room
with the bone?
Speaker 4 (16:33):
So we weren't in the room because it's such a
highly controlled environment. But we're standing just outside of the
bone room, which has floor to ceiling glass.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
And so what she's going to do now is she's
going to label and photograph all of this and then
she's going to drill into that bone and get a
small amount of the interior of the bone so that
the DNA can be extracted. And once she does that,
and she's linda it right now so you can watch it.
(17:06):
She's going to take that part of the bone and
solubilize it in a solution and then start to extract
the DNA and that's when it goes back into the
DNA extraction room.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
I can hear the sound of the drill.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Yeah, and it sort of looks like if you were
to drill through a piece of pottery, like there's some
dust coming up. Once the technician is done, the bone
samples are run through custom built machines and software that
identify hundreds of thousands of DNA markers. All of these
are tiny clues as to who this person is.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
So I'm guessing this is the same thing that happens
to the skull gabriellasent. And once the DNA is extracted,
what happens because we need a name, like who does
this skull belong to?
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Yeah, exactly, And that's where authrm's team of genetic genealogists come.
Speaker 9 (18:00):
Men, my name is Carla Davis, and I am the
chief genetic genealogist at AUTHRON.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Carla Davis and her team take the genetic profile that's
been generated and they start building out family trees.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I'm fascinated by this part of the investigation, so I
was really excited to talk to Carla and ask her
how she got into this kind of work.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
I was born into it because I was born not
knowing who my father was, and that part of me
was always missing. It was as if there was a
hole in my heart. Right and DNA came on the scene.
So my first DNA test was on twenty three and
meter and at that time, I had like to eighth cousins.
(18:52):
I didn't know what to do with fifth to eighth cousins.
I didn't understand how DNA worked, and I didn't know
anyone on my list. Right, I'm like, oh, this is
not going to help. Then I took an ancestry DNA test.
I had a third cousin match, and I said, Okay,
I think I can do something with a third cousin match.
So I just started absorbing and learning anything and everything
(19:14):
that I could get my hands on. So how to
apply DNA evidence to genealogical research? And I'm like, I'm
on something here, and then I ended up identifying my
birth father.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
What was that like for you? Even emotionally?
Speaker 9 (19:28):
Oh my goodness, you know, it was like if you
look at a picture and you tear it in half,
you only see half of that person. You don't see
the other half.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It's just.
Speaker 9 (19:38):
Finding who he was, even though he had passed away
back in two thousand and five. And completed the picture
of who I.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Was, Carla learned that her dad was a truck driver
and an amateur race car driver, and that she was
his only child. And I should add that Carla's mom
died when she was five, so she grew up desperate
to know more about both of her parents. After that discovery,
Carla says she became kind of addicted to genealogy research
(20:05):
and she started helping adoptees who were looking for their
birth parents. She ends up solving over two hundred cases,
and before she knows it, strangers are emailing her asking
for her help.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
So when the Golden State Killer was announced, it was like,
I can apply what I know. So I knew that
this was this was going to be the future of
how perpetrators and unidentified human remains would be identified.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So how does she make the leap to working on
crime scene evidence?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, good question. I was curious about that too.
Speaker 9 (20:41):
For me, it really is personal because when my daughter
was ten years old, her friend was kidnapped and brutally
murdered and her body was thrown in the ravine in
your Orleans and it was devastating, not just to my daughter,
to myself, to the entire community. It was as if
time stopped until she was found.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
What did that mean to that community?
Speaker 9 (21:08):
She was just our house, just the weekend prior to
her being taken. I didn't want my daughter going outside
to play anymore. I was scared to death for that.
When a person is taken and they go missing, it's
not just their family that suffers. Is such a larger scale. Yeah,
(21:28):
So to get them home and give everyone answers. I
don't think anyone has closure, but somehow it's information that
will allow them to hopefully heal. That should be our mission.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I wanted to talk about the case of the human
skull found in the wall of the house you worked
on that.
Speaker 9 (21:54):
One of the things that caught my attention was this
person died before for nineteen hundred, This could be one
of the oldest cases that author them solves, And sure enough,
it was one of the oldest cases that we have
solved to date.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
What was challenging about the case.
Speaker 9 (22:13):
So, if you've ever taken a consumer DNA test, once
your results are complete, you are given a list of
names that are your genetic relatives, and in this case,
the most recent common ancestors dated back to the late
seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
So we had to use historical records, census records, birth certificates,
birth records, death announcements, death records, military records, whatever we
can use to identify each generation.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
In this case, Carla is able to track down ancestors
a couple who had six kids, and based on the DNA,
she thinks the skull belongs to one of the six kids.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
So after almost two hundred years, there are only six
people that these bones could belong to.
Speaker 9 (23:00):
Two two sons, and four daughters. One daughter had died
when she was eight years old. Two of the other
daughters lived full lives and they had died and were
buried in Nebraska. But there was one daughter that really
we were focused on, and that was Esther. Esther was
born in eighteen forty eight.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
So now you have to confirm Esther's identity with one
of her living relatives.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
So I mentioned that Esther had one daughter, so that
daughter had two children, So then we identified who those
children were, and then we got down to living people.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
At this point, Authoram gives Gabriella Allison at the Kane
County Corner's Office a short list of names because they
need one more DNA sample, and this time from someone
who's alive.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Well it started.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
My wife got a phone call and it was Gabriella
calling from the Kinge County Corner's office.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I was at work.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
My wife called me and she said, I got this
phone call. And I said, oh my god, Marge, that
sounds like just such a scam. My wife said, no,
you should call him back.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I think it's the real deal.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Wayne Swiller is a retiree living in Oregon, and he
listens to his wife and he calls Gabriella back, and
Gabriella begins to explain why she's calling.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I interrupted her and I said, hey, I just got
to tell you right off the bat, I don't believe you.
This is just too incredible.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
And it turns out he's a former police officer who's
worked cold cases for decades.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh so maybe he's skeptical from experience.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, I mean he knows this call could be a scam.
Maybe like someone he put behind bars years ago is
trying to get back at him. But his wife is intrigued,
and she convinces him to give Gabriella a chance to explain.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
They knew the history of the whole case, and they
were so excited and committed that I thought, you can't
fake this. These guys are all in and I've got
to help him out whatever I can do.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
It's ironic that, having investigated cold cases in the past,
now weans on the other end of the phone.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Yeah, and he knows how it feels for Gabriella to
make that call because he's done it so many times
himself in homicides and missing person cases.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
You don't just work that job and then leave, do
You take that job with you because you get to
know the families. You get to know the victims. There's
mothers of some of these victims that will come down
to the precinct every year on the anniversary of their
son or daughter's death and just check in and see
if there's been any new developments. I mean, you're talk
(26:01):
in twenty years after their loved one has been killed,
and it made it really personal. That's more than a
job that walks around with you.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I'm guessing Wayne agrees to give some of his DNA.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Yeah, he gives what's called a DNA reference swab, which
is really just a quick swab from the inside of
his cheek.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Is it a match?
Speaker 10 (26:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:26):
It turns out that Esther Ann Granger is Wayne's great
great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Oh my god, that's so cool. So now that we
have a name, what do we know about her?
Speaker 4 (26:38):
She was born in Indiana in eighteen forty eight, and
she marries her husband, Charles, when she's sixteen. Esther becomes
pregnant pretty soon after that with her first child, but sadly,
she dies after giving birth to her daughter, who they
also named Esther.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Oh that's so sad. But that's so sweet that they
named her daughter after her. But I also wonder how
did her skull end up in the wall of a
home eighty miles away in Illinois? And where's the rest
of her body?
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, I know a lot of people have been wondering
about that. Gabriella and Rob have some ideas well.
Speaker 10 (27:17):
The running theory is that she was grave robbed. Her
body was sold to somebody, you know, a medical school
or individual who was a broker. Kind of gross to
talk about, but a broker of body parts. We don't
know if she was sold as a whole, or if
they parted it out and sold it to different types
(27:40):
of schools.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
We also know the first home owner that had the
house built. He was a doctor. He died soon after that,
and his son stayed and lived there and he was
a surgeon. How she actually got in the wall, I
don't know that we'll ever know.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
So we don't know if the rest of Uster's body
is so in that house.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
We don't. But remember the cadaver dog didn't smell anything,
and police back then didn't have any reasons really to
take apart any more of the walls, So maybe we
won't ever know.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
What about Wayne, what does he do with Esther's skull?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
So officials in Batavia, Illinois, where Esther's remains were found,
offered to cremate the skull and inter her ashes in
the local cemetery, and Wayne traveled to be there.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I think in some ways my reaction surprised me. I've
been really a private person. It was just that wave
of emotions that I never got to meet her, and
kind of I guess sadness about how we got to
where we were, but also just the emotion of closure
(28:57):
and the respect that she deserved and wishing that she
had a different path right, sad that she had died
at such a young age, and then the way that
her remains retreated in the process. And I don't blame
anybody for that. From almost the beginning, I felt like
this story needed to be told. Your life makes a
(29:20):
difference the people you touch it made a difference, and
it needs to be acknowledged.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It strikes me that solving this case not only gives
esther back her identity, but it fills in some of
Wayne's family history, connecting him to ancestors he didn't even
know existed.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
And it's a case with no eyewitnesses, no clues. I mean,
there's not even a crime scene to investigate, and it
all came down to DNA to solve a mystery from
one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Next Time on America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
Received a nine one one call from a neighbor. When
they answered the door, they found her in nothing but
a blood soaked T shirt.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
You know what it looks like.
Speaker 10 (30:10):
There's another case in another state that it also has
unknown DNA that.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Is the same.
Speaker 11 (30:17):
You know, then, I'm really excited. Now we have a
potential suspect.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fenalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our Executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hattigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(30:47):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne,
Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at AUTHRM. I'm Ailen Lance Lesser.
Thanks for listening.
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