A skull and bones found in an old evidence room at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Charleston may be those of the victims of a 1981 grave disturbance crime, according to one theory being investigated by officials.
Dr. Jesse Goliath, a forensic anthropologist at Mississippi State University, said he performed a March 8 “skeletal analysis” of those remains in the forensic lab at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology on the MSU campus in Starkville.
After more than two hours of inspecting, measuring and photographing the remains, Goliath told observers, including Tallahatchie County Sheriff Jimmy Fly and officials from the Panola County coroner’s office and the district attorney’s office, that the bones were those of two people.
Dr. Jesse Goliath, forensic anthropologist at Mississippi State University
"We had duplicate elements of the same side. For example, we had two left tibia — so two left shinbones," Goliath told The Sun-Sentinel during a telephone interview on Monday.
Based on what he called statistical “morphological or shape-based features,” Goliath stated that the skull is that of “an adult male of probable white or European ancestry.”
Of the 18 additional bones comprising the remains, Goliath said 16 bones are those of a male while two are from a female.
“Most of the remains belong with the skull,” the scientist noted. “The male remains were bigger and had more muscle attachments on them. Two bones looked more female. They were much smaller in size than the rest and thinner in terms of their overall density.”
When asked about the ancestry of the 18 bones, Goliath, who is assistant professor of biological anthropology at MSU, said, “We don’t really estimate ancestry with the rest of the skeleton. The skull is probably the best indicator.”
One tip to the possible age of the skull, Goliath noted, is the condition of the teeth, particularly the overall wear on the molars at the back of the mouth as well as the lack of any dental repair.
He said those clues indicate the skull probably predates “the 1940s or ’50s.”
Goliath, who has performed extensive forensic casework for city, state and federal agencies, is a consulting forensic anthropologist for the state of Mississippi.
He said he sometimes collaborates with officials at the state medical examiner’s office, the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory in Pearl.
Fly said it was officials at that office who first recommended he contact the MSU Department of Anthropology about the unidentified Tallahatchie County remains, discovered during cleaning and renovations at the courthouse late last month.
The sheriff said a member of the Panola County coroner’s office was asked to join him and the DA’s representative in taking the remains to MSU because Tallahatchie County Coroner Anthony Hawkins had other obligations that prevented him from making the trip.
Fly said he wanted to make the MSU examination transparent, adding that it was just one leg of a journey to learn as much about the remains as possible. While Goliath’s findings do provide some answers about the skull and bones, Fly said he still hopes for more positive identification.
“This isn’t all the testing that will be done, but we were able to get this testing done in a more timely fashion, or quicker,” the sheriff noted.
Tallahatchie County Sheriff Jimmy Fly
Cases in the state medical examiner’s office have been chronically backlogged, and there was no timetable for when that office might be able to analyze the Tallahatchie remains.
Goliath said he should complete his final report on Friday’s analysis by the end of this week and will share it with local officials.
Fly, in turn, said Tallahatchie County will submit Goliath’s report to the state medical examiner’s office.
Hawkins told The Sun-Sentinel Monday that the remains, which he said are enclosed in a body bag, will be taken to the state medical examiner’s office once he is notified that they have space.
“They’re just so backed up, they don’t have a table for me,” Hawkins said. “It’s a slow process and we’re just waiting. That’s all I can do.”
There is one theory about the bones that is based on a local criminal court case dating back more than 40 years.
In October 1981, two above-ground concrete burial vaults in the Rocky Branch Cemetery northeast of Charleston were broken into using an ax. Two men were indicted in the crime on felony charges of disturbing a grave.
Evidence — skull and bones said to have been removed from the graves of a husband and wife identified in court records as Susie Jane Harvel and Arthur Reed Harvel, the latter of whom reportedly died in 1938 — were recovered after the arrests and stored, possibly in the courthouse evidence room.
The grave disturbance case was set for trial during the May 1982 term of First District Tallahatchie County Circuit Court, but the men pleaded guilty and trial was averted.
Former longtime Tallahatchie County Sheriff William Brewer believes the human remains found in late February, in the interior room of a second-floor office on the northwest corner of the Charleston courthouse, are likely those of the couple.
After the courthouse was constructed in 1974-75, that particular office served as the office of the sheriff, said Brewer. He noted that the interior room, accessed only from within the sheriff’s office, was outfitted with two barred holding cells, used to temporarily detain prisoners awaiting court proceedings in the courtroom just down the hall.
Construction on a new Tallahatchie County Jail began in 1979, and by 1981 the sheriff, then Ellett R. Dogan, left the courthouse office to move into an office in the jail, Brewer said.
After Dogan abandoned the courthouse, the room that had provided temporary holding cells was utilized as storage space for circuit court evidence, including, Brewer suggested, the recovered remains.
Brewer said that by the time the two men pleaded guilty, the vaults had been sealed back up and the evidence was soon forgotten.
When new Circuit Judge Andrew C. Baker took office in January 1983, he set up shop in the former sheriff’s office of the courthouse, with no access to the locked room that continued to be used for evidence storage, said Brewer. Baker retired in 2010.
Tallahatchie County Circuit Clerk Daphane Neal said the district attorney's office recently requested the court file from the 1981-82 grave disturbance case.
District Attorney Jay Hale confirmed to The Sun-Sentinel on Tuesday that his office, which has been working with the sheriff's office to learn more about the rediscovered remains, is examining that grave disturbance case as “potentially a source of where these remains came from.”
Hale said investigators have spoken with former lawmen, some retired, who were on the job during the time of that case.
"We've had quite a bit of support and help from a lot of former law enforcement," he noted.
Fly said he is making no assumptions about the remains and the grave disturbance case being connected.
Unfortunately, he explained, the 1981 case file does not include a complete inventory of items removed from the tombs or recovered from the perpetrators.
“The case did happen, and it is something we’ve been looking into,” Fly noted. “But it’s too early to jump to conclusions without any facts. There are already too many people doing that now.”
Goliath said there are other tests that the state medical examiner’s office can perform on the remains, including possibly being able to extract DNA from a bone or from the pulp of a tooth in the skull.
“Some of the teeth aren’t damaged, so what they can do is drill into the tooth and get some of that DNA,” Goliath noted.
While cautioning that the presence and recoverability of DNA is an unknown, he said the age of the remains is not an indicator.
"This case is not archaeological or something that's really old, but it is fairly old," said Goliath. "Sometimes, what the person is buried in or the [surrounding] soils can cause the DNA to degrade. But these don't look that worn or that old."
Editor's note: This story has been expanded to include additional quotes and information.
