(From the McDonald County Sheriff's Office)Identification of “Grace Doe"
12-02-1990 Date of initial find for law enforcement.
Called to a scene on Oscar Talley Road of an old abandoned house in reference to a possible dead body. The people that called discovered a skull and called the Sheriff’s Office. At the scene a skull and remains of a badly decomposed body was located.
McDonald County Sheriff’s Office, Coroner’s Office, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Benton County Arkansas Sheriff’s Office, and the University of Arkansas anthropologists were all involved in the original crime scene.
A pathologist looked at the remains and estimated to be a white female in the mid to late 20’s.
Dental work was done and we had a dental record was charted by an orthodontist in Columbia, MO.
Lou Keeling was the Sheriff at the time and even with over 220 inquires, the case went cold after they could not figure out who she was and no other leads panned out during the original investigation.
“Grace’s” description was entered into the NCIC system as an Unidentified body along with eventually being in the NamUs system and the CODIS system. DNA was also put into the CODIS system and on file with the University of North Texas Center for Human Remains.
Sheriffs Schlessman, Evenson and Hall all worked on the case and/or had people that would work on the case through the years.
Det. Howard revived it in 2009 by bringing it back up to the forefront and getting the skull with a facial reconstruction expert and FBI Instructor.
The expert was able to do a likeness of what she might have looked like using the photographsMRI film of the skull. Those pictures were put out and though there were several angles pursued, nothing transpired from those efforts.
Det. Howard was told that it would be only by the “Grace of god” that we could find out who she was. After that the name “Grace” stuck.
From then to present, the Sheriff’s Office has had calls from people from coast to coast with ideas on who “Grace” might be. The Sheriff’s Office followed up on all of those and used dental records and DNA to exclude possible matches from all over the country. Deputies and Sheriffs kept looking over the binder and always looking for leads and following up on different avenues.
In September 2020, Sheriff Hall was contacted by Othram Inc. Othram and Sheriff Hall decided to use advanced DNA testing to identify “Grace."
Othram was sent skeletal remains and they extracted DNA and then used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to build a DNA profile that could be used to find distant relatives. The Sheriff’s Office and Othram used the DNASolves.com website to raise funding from the public for this case.
Southeast Missouri State University Anthropology Department contacted us and wanted to study the skeletal remains of “Grace” and allow students to do learning and anthropological analysis. We allowed the analysis and study and Southeast Missouri State University Anthropology also helped help fund the casework.
In January 2021, the Sheriff’s Office received information from Othram Inc. that there were candidate relatives identified for “Grace”. These candidates were identified through genealogy research performed at Othram.
Othram asked the Sheriff’s Office to contact candidate relatives. Lt. Hall went down the list and contacted Danielle Pixler who was on the genealogical tree developed by Othram.
During the conversation, Ms. Pixler stated that she had a half-sister, Shawna Garber, that had been in foster care in Garnett, Kansas and then went back into state care. Danielle did not know what happened with Shawna after she left foster care. After Shawna left foster care, Danielle stated that she had been looking for Shawna for over 28 years.
In February, Danielle agreed to contribute a DNA sample and the Topeka, Kansas Police Department agreed to take a sample and send to Lt. Hall. The DNA sample was then forwarded to Othram for testing using a rapid familial test called KinSNPTM.
March 29, 2021 received a call from Othram saying that the DNA from Danielle Pixler was a match to “Grace” as a half-sibling. Shawna Garber was her only half sibling that is missing.
Grace has been identified as Shawna Beth Garber - born March 1, 1968.
The next steps for the Sheriff’s Office will be to try and see if we can trace the whereabouts of Shawna and what might have happened to her.
Lt. Michael S. Hall
McDonald County Sheriff Office
No comments:
Post a Comment