October 22, 2025 • 20 mins
People swept away by Hurricane Katrina, lone travelers who disappeared, and kids who never came home. Where are all of these missing people, and are their unidentified remains sitting in universities and law enforcement offices around the country?
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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
It was August two thousand and five. Tanett Jackson and
her husband Hardy lived with their four children in a
small house in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Jacksons and their neighbors
had seen their fair share of hurricanes and prepared like
they would for any other storm, but no one was
prepared for Katrina. In a matter of hours, Tonet's name
(00:31):
would be added to the list of twelve thousand missing people.
This is America's crime lab. I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Coroner's
offices around the country are filled with boxes of unidentified
human remains. We've talked about this many times on the show.
(00:53):
These boxes represent dead ends, times when traditional DNA testing
didn't work. Meanwhile, there are families who never stopped looking
for their lost loved one who might have ended up
in one of those boxes without a name. Today, we
talk with someone who's been trying to solve this problem
to learn about her experience as someone with a very
(01:14):
unusual job and a special role when it comes to
iding mysterious remains.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Bones, they're not really viewed as people because they don't
have soft tissue. They're not visually recognizable as a human,
and then sometimes the investigation is not prioritized.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Anastasia Holobinko is a forensic anthropologist, which means she steps
in when law enforcement runs out of leads. Think Temperance
Brennan from the TV show Bones, studying skeletal remains to
find clues about things like gender and biogeographical ancestry. For
nine years, Anastasia worked for the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's Office.
(02:02):
This year she joined AUTHRAM as the Special Projects coordinator
for Anthropology. In college, Anastasia thought she might study marine
mammals until she took an elective course in forensic anthropology
that changed her life.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I actually got my first look at human bones, and
I was just fascinated, fascinated and particularly viewing the skull.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That's a person.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I mean, I don't know what that person looked like
in real life, but that skull represents a human.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
One of Anastasia's first cases using forensic anthropology involved a
lost boter on Lake Erie. The body was discovered one
spring as the ice on the lake thought out.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So that was really my first autopsy, seeing what that
body look like. And I have to say I used
vis under my nose because the odor is something and
I think you either get used to it completely or
you don't. And it's something that I still am struck
by the fact that I haven't completely gotten used to it.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
By twenty sixteen, Anastasia was working in Mississippi's Medical Examiner's office,
where she faced the state's long backlog of unidentified remains cases.
When she first learned about OUTHRAM, she was intrigued. Maybe
the problem wasn't that these cases were impossible to solve,
Maybe they just needed new technology. At AUTHRAM, Kristin Middelman
(03:32):
shared an interest in clearing Mississippi's backlog. She knew the
science was there, but she was facing a different obstacle money.
There were no funds to work the cases. Then a
Mississippi native, Carla Davis, offered to fund the project. Carla
had spent years researching DNA and family trees for adoptees,
(03:53):
and she later joined AUTHRAM to lead their genetic genealogy,
but before that, she was compelled to help identify remains
in her own state with her own money. Now with
Carla involved, they could begin to tackle the backlog of
unidentified human remains at the Medical Examiner's office. At the time,
there were forty three unidentified remains cases on the back burner.
(04:15):
People had assumed that technology was the limiting factor and
that many cases were just unsolvable. See anthropologists would measure
features of the skull or skeleton to try and figure
out clues about where someone was from. That was helpful,
but it was also inexact, and in tough cases, it
didn't give investigators enough information. Now Authroom's technology offered a
(04:38):
way to look at tens of thousands of DNA markers
and compare them to other people with well documented family
histories think big family trees. Kristen was confident that this
would reveal a much clearer picture of an unknown person's origins,
but looking at the Mississippi remains, there was a problem.
In many cases, all that was left were bones, some
(05:01):
completely stripped of DNA before they were shelved years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
The Mississippi bones are difficult to work with for a
couple reasons. A lot of them have been cleaned off
with detergents that make it more difficult to do DNA
testing because back then, advanced DNA testing wasn't a thing.
Even DNA testing might not have been a thing, And
so what they did is they washed these bones boil them,
(05:27):
use detergents so that they can clean them to be
able to better look at them, not knowing that you know,
decades later DNA testing would be able to give them
the answer. But the worst thing you can do to
DNA is boil it or wash it with a detergent.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
On top of that, Unlike most states, Mississippi's backlog included
a lot of Hurricane Katrina victims.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Katrina victims, as you can imagine, there would be a
lot of contamination there that make the DNA testing a
little bit more difficult. There's a lot of degradation because
a lot of them were left in water or out
in field for decades and decades and decades.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
This is where Authurm's tech may be able to help.
Kristen and Anastasia started working together to start. They had
a particular Jane Doe in mind, and they had a
hunch that their name might be Toannette Jackson.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
There are several that really I will remember for a
very long time. That would be one of those cases.
Tonette Jackson and her husband were trying to seek refuge
in their house on their property and she was swept
away during the storm.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Tenette and Hardy Jackson were climbing up to their attic
to escape the rising water when a twenty foot wave
crashed into their home and split the house in two.
Hardy clung to a tree with one hand and held
on to Toennette with the other. When Tinette realized Hardy
wouldn't be able to hold her for much longer, she
made him promise to take care of their children and grandchildren.
(06:58):
Then they let go.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
When the storm cleared and people were coming out onto
the streets, a reporter came across mister Jackson, who was
visibly distraught, and she was able to talk to him
about his story.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Reporter Jennifer Merley from w k RG, a local CBS affiliate,
saw mister Jackson walking with his two young sons. After
he told her about his wife's disappearance, the reporter asked
him to describe her so people could keep an eye out.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
What's your wife's name in case we can put this
out there. Tell that Jackson?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (07:39):
And what's your name? Part of Jackson? Where are you
guys going? We gotta nowhere to.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Go, no web go.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I'm love. That's all I hed. That's all I had.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
In the video, the reporter does something you don't see
on TV. As she holds the microphone to Hardy Jackson,
listening to him, she starts to cry at the end.
When she turns the story back to the news anchors,
they seem speechless behind their desk. I think we need
to go to a break, one of them says, and
(08:17):
then bursts into tears.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I think we need to go to our break. We'll
return with more in just a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Weeks later, in the neighboring community of Saint Martin's, a
search crew located a body. It was in between the
slabs where two houses once stood.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
They believed them to be those of miss Jackson, but
there were technical difficulties in achieving an identification.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Was this Tenette.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No one could tell for sure, and her remains were
buried as a Jane Doe, but Tannette's husband, Hardy Jackson,
never stopped looking. Nineteen years after Hurricane Katrina swept to
(09:22):
net Jackson away, Anastasia took up the case. The Mississippi
Bureau of Investigation decided to exhumem two bodies that were
buried as unidentified individuals in the wake of Katrina, one
man and one woman. A Jane Doe.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I took samples from both sets of remains to send
to AUTHRM.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I do know that there was a lot of bacterial
non human DNA there in her sample specifically, and if
you don't have purpose built methods to filter that stuff
out genome sequencing sequences, everything plant DNA, bacterial DNA, anyone
else's DNA that may have touched those remains, it's super powerful.
But if you have markers from all of these genomes,
(10:11):
you actually aren't going to get any relatives because they're
all mixed together.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
By selectively analyzing the human genetic material hidden among DNA
from non human sources, Authorne was able to reveal the
truth about Jane Doe's remains. These remains did belong to
Tenette Jackson, the woman who hadn't been seen since a
twenty foot wave tore her away from her husband.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And so it came full circle.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Unfortunately, Hardy, her husband had passed away a few years earlier.
He never got to hear the news, but Tinett's.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Family did, and he did spend the rest of his
days keeping his promise to her and looking for her.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
This was just one of dozens of cases that were
so through Anastasia's partnership with authram for the Mississippi backlog,
But it wasn't long before Anastasia discovered another hurdle. Before
she arrived at the Mississippi Medical Examiner's office, Mississippi had
relied on universities or forensic anthropologists who were out of
(11:17):
state for help with investigations, and when she tried to
get a full picture of how many unidentified remains were
actually in state custody, she realized something. Mississippi's remains were
sitting in university labs and storage rooms all across the South.
So she started making calls to nearby universities slowly and
(11:40):
sometimes with a lot of pushback. They agreed to send
them back. One box of remains they got back posed
a new problem. The remains were recovered in twenty twenty two,
but when Anastasia looked at them, it was clear they
were much older. She dated them to the nineteen eighties,
and she didn't have much else.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It was an incomplete case that I received, meaning not
all of the skill. Little elements were present, and there
were some personal effects, but there was no documentation with
the remains.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But the big problem was they weren't sure when this
person went missing. This made it harder to know which
generation this person might belong to on a family tree.
Anastasia sent the evidence to Athram. Their scientists were able
to build a genealogical profile that was used to conduct
genealogical research. This helped them identify Luther Ezelle.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
They realized that he was born in nineteen thirteen. I
believe he was a father to six children. He was married,
He loved fishing, and went missing in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And he lived in California and traveled cross country in
his vehicle to assist a family member with a move
and somewhere around Mississippi. He checked in with his family,
but then was not heard from again, and they hired
private investigators.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Then they searched for their father for decades.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And I know that he was a family man that
his family honestly thought, really loved being a family man,
and then one day he was gone.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Thirty two years after he disappeared, Anastasia contacted Luther Eazell's family.
She returned to the few personal belongings found with his body.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
I know his daughters were really really happy to hear
from us and figure out what happened.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
To their father.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I think this is one of those cases where they
weren't sure if he just left and decided not to
come back to the family, and now they have answers
and they know that that's not what happened.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
We still don't know exactly what happened to Luther during
that cross country trip, why he died, or how his
body ended up where it did, but at least his
family has some closure. They know he didn't stay away
on purpose, they know where he is now. Now, the
(14:40):
story of Luther Usel unveils another surprising part of how
unidentified bodies are treated, because if Anastasia hadn't gotten his
remains back from that university lab, what would have happened
to him?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Probably the long term use of unidentified human remains as
teaching specimens.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
This kind of blew my mind because I had no
idea that a body found without any idea might end
up as a classroom tool.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And we're not talking about legitimate or official anatomical donations
where the individual has signed off on donation of his
or her body to a teaching institution or maybe the
next of kin authorizing this donation.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Teaching specimens now, typically when people donate their bodies to science.
They're donating a cadaver, a complete body with skin and
tissue and organs. When the cadaver is no longer needed
as a teaching tool, most medical schools return the bodies
to families for burial or cremation. This means that medical
(15:49):
schools do have cadavers, but they don't have a lot
of access to skeletal remains. In the past, since unidentified
human remains were more difficult to ident identify, and since
universities needed skeletal remains for teaching purposes and law enforcement
wasn't clamoring for the remains to be returned, universities and
(16:10):
historical institutions may have been using unidentified remains to teach students,
remains that really should be returned to the state and
ultimately families.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I can't speculate as to what would goes through people's minds.
The explanation that, well, we don't have advanced technology, so
we can't identify this person, so why even try with
the technology we have nowadays, many practitioners or professors, they
have changed their outlook over the years and as well
as the development of standards. But really, until the death
(16:46):
investigation systems became more structured.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Surprised that this sort of thing happened.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
There's been a reckoning of sorts. Many universe, city systems
and cultural institutions are taking a closer look at their
skeletal remains collections. State police are also asking universities to
check their storage rooms for unidentified remains, and then you
have medical examiner's offices calling universities to see if unidentified
(17:17):
remains are sitting on their shelves, like what Anastasia has
been doing, because there is no need to wait. The
technology exists to solve the puzzle. Kristin, Anastasia and Carla
started with forty three unidentified remains cases in Mississippi, and
since then they've helped identify most of them. But in
(17:38):
the meantime, the backlog has continued to grow. As of
September twenty twenty five, there are sixty nine new unidentified
remains cases waiting to be solved in Mississippi. But this
growth doesn't reflect neglect, it reflects renewed hope. Kristin says
more people in the state are submitting cases for review
(18:00):
because of the success the teams had. Anastasia has appeared
before many state legislatures. She wants them to know that
there's a solution and that solving cases is a choice.
Some states are beginning to get on board.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
There are thousands, tens of thousands of unidentified human remains cases.
It can become so overwhelming, but I think most of
us who do this type of work are very good
at compartmentalizing. And of course if you're not good at compartmentalizing,
then you become much more proficient at it through this work.
(18:41):
But it really is just it's moving forward, one name
at a time.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Anastasia Julobinko is a former forensic anthropologist for the State
of Mississippi, now now a special Projects coordinator in Anthropology
at Authrum.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
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 Hadigadour and David
and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina Norville and Ali Perry.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Special thanks to Connell.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Byrne Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at AUTHRM.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening. Bobo bo Bo
It was August two thousand and five. Tanett Jackson and
her husband Hardy lived with their four children in a
small house in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Jacksons and their neighbors
had seen their fair share of hurricanes and prepared like
they would for any other storm, but no one was
prepared for Katrina. In a matter of hours, Tonet's name
(00:31):
would be added to the list of twelve thousand missing people.
This is America's crime lab. I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Coroner's
offices around the country are filled with boxes of unidentified
human remains. We've talked about this many times on the show.
(00:53):
These boxes represent dead ends, times when traditional DNA testing
didn't work. Meanwhile, there are families who never stopped looking
for their lost loved one who might have ended up
in one of those boxes without a name. Today, we
talk with someone who's been trying to solve this problem
to learn about her experience as someone with a very
(01:14):
unusual job and a special role when it comes to
iding mysterious remains.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Bones, they're not really viewed as people because they don't
have soft tissue. They're not visually recognizable as a human,
and then sometimes the investigation is not prioritized.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Anastasia Holobinko is a forensic anthropologist, which means she steps
in when law enforcement runs out of leads. Think Temperance
Brennan from the TV show Bones, studying skeletal remains to
find clues about things like gender and biogeographical ancestry. For
nine years, Anastasia worked for the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's Office.
(02:02):
This year she joined AUTHRAM as the Special Projects coordinator
for Anthropology. In college, Anastasia thought she might study marine
mammals until she took an elective course in forensic anthropology
that changed her life.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I actually got my first look at human bones, and
I was just fascinated, fascinated and particularly viewing the skull.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That's a person.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I mean, I don't know what that person looked like
in real life, but that skull represents a human.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
One of Anastasia's first cases using forensic anthropology involved a
lost boter on Lake Erie. The body was discovered one
spring as the ice on the lake thought out.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So that was really my first autopsy, seeing what that
body look like. And I have to say I used
vis under my nose because the odor is something and
I think you either get used to it completely or
you don't. And it's something that I still am struck
by the fact that I haven't completely gotten used to it.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
By twenty sixteen, Anastasia was working in Mississippi's Medical Examiner's office,
where she faced the state's long backlog of unidentified remains cases.
When she first learned about OUTHRAM, she was intrigued. Maybe
the problem wasn't that these cases were impossible to solve,
Maybe they just needed new technology. At AUTHRAM, Kristin Middelman
(03:32):
shared an interest in clearing Mississippi's backlog. She knew the
science was there, but she was facing a different obstacle money.
There were no funds to work the cases. Then a
Mississippi native, Carla Davis, offered to fund the project. Carla
had spent years researching DNA and family trees for adoptees,
(03:53):
and she later joined AUTHRAM to lead their genetic genealogy,
but before that, she was compelled to help identify remains
in her own state with her own money. Now with
Carla involved, they could begin to tackle the backlog of
unidentified human remains at the Medical Examiner's office. At the time,
there were forty three unidentified remains cases on the back burner.
(04:15):
People had assumed that technology was the limiting factor and
that many cases were just unsolvable. See anthropologists would measure
features of the skull or skeleton to try and figure
out clues about where someone was from. That was helpful,
but it was also inexact, and in tough cases, it
didn't give investigators enough information. Now Authroom's technology offered a
(04:38):
way to look at tens of thousands of DNA markers
and compare them to other people with well documented family
histories think big family trees. Kristen was confident that this
would reveal a much clearer picture of an unknown person's origins,
but looking at the Mississippi remains, there was a problem.
In many cases, all that was left were bones, some
(05:01):
completely stripped of DNA before they were shelved years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
The Mississippi bones are difficult to work with for a
couple reasons. A lot of them have been cleaned off
with detergents that make it more difficult to do DNA
testing because back then, advanced DNA testing wasn't a thing.
Even DNA testing might not have been a thing, And
so what they did is they washed these bones boil them,
(05:27):
use detergents so that they can clean them to be
able to better look at them, not knowing that you know,
decades later DNA testing would be able to give them
the answer. But the worst thing you can do to
DNA is boil it or wash it with a detergent.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
On top of that, Unlike most states, Mississippi's backlog included
a lot of Hurricane Katrina victims.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Katrina victims, as you can imagine, there would be a
lot of contamination there that make the DNA testing a
little bit more difficult. There's a lot of degradation because
a lot of them were left in water or out
in field for decades and decades and decades.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
This is where Authurm's tech may be able to help.
Kristen and Anastasia started working together to start. They had
a particular Jane Doe in mind, and they had a
hunch that their name might be Toannette Jackson.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
There are several that really I will remember for a
very long time. That would be one of those cases.
Tonette Jackson and her husband were trying to seek refuge
in their house on their property and she was swept
away during the storm.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Tenette and Hardy Jackson were climbing up to their attic
to escape the rising water when a twenty foot wave
crashed into their home and split the house in two.
Hardy clung to a tree with one hand and held
on to Toennette with the other. When Tinette realized Hardy
wouldn't be able to hold her for much longer, she
made him promise to take care of their children and grandchildren.
(06:58):
Then they let go.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
When the storm cleared and people were coming out onto
the streets, a reporter came across mister Jackson, who was
visibly distraught, and she was able to talk to him
about his story.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Reporter Jennifer Merley from w k RG, a local CBS affiliate,
saw mister Jackson walking with his two young sons. After
he told her about his wife's disappearance, the reporter asked
him to describe her so people could keep an eye out.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
What's your wife's name in case we can put this
out there. Tell that Jackson?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (07:39):
And what's your name? Part of Jackson? Where are you
guys going? We gotta nowhere to.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Go, no web go.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I'm love. That's all I hed. That's all I had.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
In the video, the reporter does something you don't see
on TV. As she holds the microphone to Hardy Jackson,
listening to him, she starts to cry at the end.
When she turns the story back to the news anchors,
they seem speechless behind their desk. I think we need
to go to a break, one of them says, and
(08:17):
then bursts into tears.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I think we need to go to our break. We'll
return with more in just a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Weeks later, in the neighboring community of Saint Martin's, a
search crew located a body. It was in between the
slabs where two houses once stood.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
They believed them to be those of miss Jackson, but
there were technical difficulties in achieving an identification.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Was this Tenette.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
No one could tell for sure, and her remains were
buried as a Jane Doe, but Tannette's husband, Hardy Jackson,
never stopped looking. Nineteen years after Hurricane Katrina swept to
(09:22):
net Jackson away, Anastasia took up the case. The Mississippi
Bureau of Investigation decided to exhumem two bodies that were
buried as unidentified individuals in the wake of Katrina, one
man and one woman. A Jane Doe.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
I took samples from both sets of remains to send
to AUTHRM.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
I do know that there was a lot of bacterial
non human DNA there in her sample specifically, and if
you don't have purpose built methods to filter that stuff
out genome sequencing sequences, everything plant DNA, bacterial DNA, anyone
else's DNA that may have touched those remains, it's super powerful.
But if you have markers from all of these genomes,
(10:11):
you actually aren't going to get any relatives because they're
all mixed together.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
By selectively analyzing the human genetic material hidden among DNA
from non human sources, Authorne was able to reveal the
truth about Jane Doe's remains. These remains did belong to
Tenette Jackson, the woman who hadn't been seen since a
twenty foot wave tore her away from her husband.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And so it came full circle.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Unfortunately, Hardy, her husband had passed away a few years earlier.
He never got to hear the news, but Tinett's.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Family did, and he did spend the rest of his
days keeping his promise to her and looking for her.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
This was just one of dozens of cases that were
so through Anastasia's partnership with authram for the Mississippi backlog,
But it wasn't long before Anastasia discovered another hurdle. Before
she arrived at the Mississippi Medical Examiner's office, Mississippi had
relied on universities or forensic anthropologists who were out of
(11:17):
state for help with investigations, and when she tried to
get a full picture of how many unidentified remains were
actually in state custody, she realized something. Mississippi's remains were
sitting in university labs and storage rooms all across the South.
So she started making calls to nearby universities slowly and
(11:40):
sometimes with a lot of pushback. They agreed to send
them back. One box of remains they got back posed
a new problem. The remains were recovered in twenty twenty two,
but when Anastasia looked at them, it was clear they
were much older. She dated them to the nineteen eighties,
and she didn't have much else.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It was an incomplete case that I received, meaning not
all of the skill. Little elements were present, and there
were some personal effects, but there was no documentation with
the remains.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But the big problem was they weren't sure when this
person went missing. This made it harder to know which
generation this person might belong to on a family tree.
Anastasia sent the evidence to Athram. Their scientists were able
to build a genealogical profile that was used to conduct
genealogical research. This helped them identify Luther Ezelle.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
They realized that he was born in nineteen thirteen. I
believe he was a father to six children. He was married,
He loved fishing, and went missing in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
And he lived in California and traveled cross country in
his vehicle to assist a family member with a move
and somewhere around Mississippi. He checked in with his family,
but then was not heard from again, and they hired
private investigators.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Then they searched for their father for decades.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
And I know that he was a family man that
his family honestly thought, really loved being a family man,
and then one day he was gone.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Thirty two years after he disappeared, Anastasia contacted Luther Eazell's family.
She returned to the few personal belongings found with his body.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
I know his daughters were really really happy to hear
from us and figure out what happened.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
To their father.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I think this is one of those cases where they
weren't sure if he just left and decided not to
come back to the family, and now they have answers
and they know that that's not what happened.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
We still don't know exactly what happened to Luther during
that cross country trip, why he died, or how his
body ended up where it did, but at least his
family has some closure. They know he didn't stay away
on purpose, they know where he is now. Now, the
(14:40):
story of Luther Usel unveils another surprising part of how
unidentified bodies are treated, because if Anastasia hadn't gotten his
remains back from that university lab, what would have happened
to him?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Probably the long term use of unidentified human remains as
teaching specimens.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
This kind of blew my mind because I had no
idea that a body found without any idea might end
up as a classroom tool.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And we're not talking about legitimate or official anatomical donations
where the individual has signed off on donation of his
or her body to a teaching institution or maybe the
next of kin authorizing this donation.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Teaching specimens now, typically when people donate their bodies to science.
They're donating a cadaver, a complete body with skin and
tissue and organs. When the cadaver is no longer needed
as a teaching tool, most medical schools return the bodies
to families for burial or cremation. This means that medical
(15:49):
schools do have cadavers, but they don't have a lot
of access to skeletal remains. In the past, since unidentified
human remains were more difficult to ident identify, and since
universities needed skeletal remains for teaching purposes and law enforcement
wasn't clamoring for the remains to be returned, universities and
(16:10):
historical institutions may have been using unidentified remains to teach students,
remains that really should be returned to the state and
ultimately families.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I can't speculate as to what would goes through people's minds.
The explanation that, well, we don't have advanced technology, so
we can't identify this person, so why even try with
the technology we have nowadays, many practitioners or professors, they
have changed their outlook over the years and as well
as the development of standards. But really, until the death
(16:46):
investigation systems became more structured.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Surprised that this sort of thing happened.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
There's been a reckoning of sorts. Many universe, city systems
and cultural institutions are taking a closer look at their
skeletal remains collections. State police are also asking universities to
check their storage rooms for unidentified remains, and then you
have medical examiner's offices calling universities to see if unidentified
(17:17):
remains are sitting on their shelves, like what Anastasia has
been doing, because there is no need to wait. The
technology exists to solve the puzzle. Kristin, Anastasia and Carla
started with forty three unidentified remains cases in Mississippi, and
since then they've helped identify most of them. But in
(17:38):
the meantime, the backlog has continued to grow. As of
September twenty twenty five, there are sixty nine new unidentified
remains cases waiting to be solved in Mississippi. But this
growth doesn't reflect neglect, it reflects renewed hope. Kristin says
more people in the state are submitting cases for review
(18:00):
because of the success the teams had. Anastasia has appeared
before many state legislatures. She wants them to know that
there's a solution and that solving cases is a choice.
Some states are beginning to get on board.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
There are thousands, tens of thousands of unidentified human remains cases.
It can become so overwhelming, but I think most of
us who do this type of work are very good
at compartmentalizing. And of course if you're not good at compartmentalizing,
then you become much more proficient at it through this work.
(18:41):
But it really is just it's moving forward, one name
at a time.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Anastasia Julobinko is a former forensic anthropologist for the State
of Mississippi, now now a special Projects coordinator in Anthropology
at Authrum.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
America's Crime Lab.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
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 Hadigadour and David
and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina Norville and Ali Perry.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Special thanks to Connell.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Byrne Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at AUTHRM.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening. Bobo bo Bo
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