Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators (15 page)

Though no other remains were found back then, the dogs had hit on a couple of “areas of interest”—places where decomposing remains might be or might have been. This was the area where we found ourselves, up on a ridgetop.

“Found him,” Bobby again yelled, his voice echoing through the ravine. Indeed, he had really found a bone, one as green as a gourd. Alas, there was no doubt that the bone was animal, probably from a piece of meat bought at the grocery store. “Butcher marks,” Bobby said as we looked at the bone. “Probably just junk from somebody’s old campsite.” We were no closer to finding Lloyd Floyd Thomas—that is, unless Lloyd was a rump roast from the local grocer.

The skull that had been found back in 1995 was sent to the National Museum of Natural History, part of the illustrious Smithsonian Institution, for examination by Dr. Doug Owsley. Dr. Owsley is one of the dozens of Dr. Bill Bass’s prize pupils who dot the country, analyzing human remains. Though the exact numbers are not known, Dr. Bass is credited with being responsible for having taught at least half of all forensic anthropologists working throughout the world today. This incredible group forms the unique nexus between the new, modern-day forensic anthropologist and the scientifically trained crime scene investigator. Their impact can be felt all across the country. From the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Dr. Bass’s students continue to make an impact everywhere in helping to solve the mysteries left behind from human remains.

Dr. Owsley, whose work encompasses a wide range of interesting cases including the analysis of human remains from the first American settlement in Jamestown and the macabre and butchered bones left behind by Jeffrey Dahmer, received the skull from Lynchburg investigators in April 1995. In his report back to the investigators, Dr. Owsley concluded that the partial skull was from an African American male, at least fifty years old but probably older. This determination was acquired through statistical comparisons with other known specimens, which, over time, have been able to provide enough information to generate a database of measurements against which to compare samples. However, the skull found in Virginia was missing significant portions, particularly the mandible and the mandibular teeth. Unfortunately, without more bones, Dr. Owsley’s ultimate analysis was inconclusive, and the report stated that a positive identification was impossible.

In spite of this, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, using photographs of Lloyd Floyd Thomas, created a computer-aided superimposition of the skull and the photographs. Dr. Owsley determined that the general shape of the cranium was “a good match,” making several observations of similarity, including upper facial height, eye sockets, brow ridges, and what was said to be one of the most striking comparisons, the “moderately prominent glabella and depressed nasal root” (in layman’s terms, the space between the eyebrows and the distance from the cheek-bones to the nose). The final analysis of all of the compiled data: a high probability that the skull was Lloyd Floyd Thomas’s.

Though the Smithsonian’s analysis was interesting, it ultimately provided little boost to the investigation, and again the case went cold. The investigators who had first looked for Lloyd Floyd Thomas began to retire, passing their old relics of cases gone by to a younger generation of eager investigators. One of these new investigators was John Pelletier. In 2003, Investigator Pelletier took what remained of the case and began to organize it methodically to see what evidence remained in the inventory, what case notes still existed, what interview notes remained, and so on. Cold cases are not like wine—most do not improve with age. Pelletier didn’t have a lot to go on. A few eight-by-ten photographs, some case files (others were missing), a brandy bottle, two latent prints lifted from that bottle—essentially the same pathetic evidence from fifteen years earlier, plus the skull and teeth, which were still at the Smithsonian.

But by 2003, new advances in forensic technology and capabilities had emerged, particularly the evolution of DNA analysis that could help the Lynchburg investigators garner new information. Pelletier decided to send the latent lifts, some of the teeth, and the skull to a forensic laboratory in Roanoke, Virginia, for DNA analysis of the evidence. Analysis of DNA evidence, particularly from a cold case, has become a crap-shoot, to say the least. The serious backlog that is crippling our country’s crime labs is reaching near-catastrophic proportions. It is similar to the last scene in the movie
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, in which the Ark of the Covenant is stored in an unimaginably large and very full warehouse for “later” analysis. We’ve seen container after container of DNA simply sitting on refrigerator shelves all across the country, awaiting analysis—some even in household refrigerators, in jars with sticky circular rings left on the bottom from months and years of condensation. By the time the analysts have time to get around to it, be it weeks, months, years, or even decades later, in some tragic cases, the evidence may be misplaced or lost or destroyed or simply no longer cared about. In this case, the Lynchburg investigators even struggled to get comparison swabs from Lloyd Thomas’s living siblings. Some people are just suspicious of being called out of the blue to submit to having a giant cotton swab crammed into their mouths, collecting epithelial cells for a later comparison to a brother who has been gone for more than fifteen years—a brother whom they weren’t even that close to in the first place. However, Lloyd’s brother did eventually give a buccal swab for comparison to the skull’s DNA.

Investigator Pelletier was persistent and thorough in his endeavor to resolve some part of the case, even if it was only to verify conclusively that the skull indeed belonged to Lloyd Floyd Thomas. And by persistent, we mean he bugged the hell out of the DNA scientists at the Virginia lab. In 2006, eighteen months after Pelletier had sent the items to be examined (the skull, the teeth, the brandy bottle, the latent lifts off the bottle, and the buccal swab from Lloyd’s brother), the scientists finally analyzed the evidence. They isolated DNA from a tooth from the skull as well as from the fingerprints off the brandy bottle. But it was a weak profile. They also analyzed the buccal swab from Lloyd’s brother, and though the samples from the tooth and from the brother had similarities, they were common across many people and had too few similarities to draw any conclusions. This was particularly true in 2004 when the evidence was sent. The only hope now was to do a mitochondrial DNA comparison.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis, even in 2008, is a highly specialized technique and one that is not easily or inexpensively obtained. There are only four regional mitochondrial DNA labs in the United States, and their backlog is roughly two years long—give or take. Private labs can do the analysis much faster, but the price is steep, running anywhere from two to five thousand dollars per test. And with police budgets tighter than they’ve ever been, that’s money most departments cannot afford. Lynchburg is one of those departments. Though the resourceful Pelletier has had some conversations about striking a deal to get more DNA analyzed, for now the mitochondrial analysis will have to wait.

After about eight hours of searching the hills and ravines for Lloyd, we finally called it a day. It was starting to drizzle, ahead of a massive cold front that had the meteorologists already talking about the possibility of snow later in the week. Lloyd Floyd Thomas would not be found on our search, and quite frankly, unless someone stumbles headfirst by accident into the rest of his remains, he probably never will. He could even still be alive; who knows? He would be eighty-one years old in 2009. We gathered our supplies, our divining rods, our green bones, and loaded everything back into the crime scene vans. Bobby locked the gate to Blackwater Creek Park behind us as we left Lloyd’s supposed final resting place. For us, it would be the last time setting foot in this park. But for the investigators, the search may never end. It is still an open investigation to this day, with Pelletier attempting to arrange for the mitochondrial analysis and Bobby chasing leads like those from the drunken guy who’d claimed he’d killed Thomas. They’ve even arranged to go back into the house and process the scene for cleaned-up or faint traces of blood. It’s a long shot at best. The sad thing is, the only potential suspect who was ever developed, George Morton, is now dead. They will probably never solve the crime, but hopefully one day they’ll get a break and find Lloyd Floyd Thomas.

Back at the partially condemned church, also known as the Lynchburg Police Department, we gathered in the basement at the mini-crime scene lab with Bobby. The lab is very compact, but it has a fuming chamber and a few other forensic accoutrements that make analysis of minor evidence relatively easy. “Now, how do those damn things work?” Bobby asked, referring to the divining rods in that wonderful Virginian accent. He hadn’t had the opportunity to witness Dr. Vass conducting this experiment in person. “Is he an alien?” Bobby asked us, joking.

“No, he’s from Jersey,” we told Bobby, laughing. We get that question all the time about Dr. Arpad Vass because of his wide-ranging intelligence on a myriad of topics—not to mention his stint at Roswell that he can’t talk about. Frankly, sometimes we also wonder if he might be from Mars, mainly because we’ve never met anyone here on Earth as smart as he is.

Bobby tried out our homemade divining rods on the bones we’d found. We had constructed our rods using a hanger from the dry cleaner’s, because dry-cleaning hangers like the ones that hold freshly pressed pants come with a round, hollow, cardboard tube on the hanging part of the hanger. All we did was simply cut the long portion of the hanger in half and remove the hollow cardboard tube (there now being two halves). The metal pieces were bent into the shape of an L and inserted into the straight cardboard pieces. The cardboard is the part of the rod that you hold, allowing the metal part to move about freely. We laid one of the bones in the middle of the floor and handed Bobby the rods. Back and forth he walked, slowly, holding his arms steady, walking right up to the bone, holding his outstretched arms over the bone. Nothing. He repeated it from the other direction. Again, nothing. “You sure Arpad’s damn things work?” Bobby asked.

“They’re not Arpad’s. We made ’em,” we told Bobby.

“I’ll be damned,” he yelled, faking anger as we laughed. “You drive all the way up here, and you two make the rods? You don’t even bring the real set?” Maybe we were looking for “divining intervention” here in your “police church,” we told him, tongue in cheek. “Whatever,” he responded, flinging our rods into the air and walking past us in that typical Bobby Moore way of telling us that we were done here. And we were.

The next day we met Bobby at his other office, upstairs in the investigations side of the police department. The office was simply a large, open room with wooden floors and wooden desks arranged to get as many workspaces in there as possible. The brass of the unit had actual walls surrounding their sparse office space. Bobby is not only a crime scene investigator; he is a detective as well. The initials
CSI
are misleading, because individuals who work crime scenes don’t typically investigate anything. They simply process the scene, draw no conclusions, and turn over the investigation to a detective. It’s just another misnomer that is portrayed on television. However, though Bobby can process a scene, he spends most of his time investigating crime. On days when he is not dusting a fingerprint or stringing a bloodstain, he is shaking down leads.

“We’re gonna knock on some doors today,” Bobby growled as he grabbed his clipboard from his desk. A few days before we arrived in Lynchburg, some boys had broken a plate glass window in a local auto store. A security camera poorly captured the event, making identifying suspects a tough proposition. But as luck would have it, one of the kids
was
identified; and Bobby, based on a conversation with the suspect, was going to try to corral more of the players involved.

We left the police department in Bobby’s Taurus and headed just up the hill to a residence not more than a mile from the station. Bobby pulled up right in front of the residence and parked on the street. “This ought to be interesting,” he crooned as we exited the car. Within just a few steps up the paved sidewalk that led to the front door, we could hear the pounding of many sets of feet on hardwood floors, scrambling about the house in all directions. With all of the commotion going on, Bobby continued up the walkway, right up to the door, as we followed directly behind. On reaching the door, Bobby knocked three times, very hard, and took a step to the side of the door. We came to a halt like two rubes, directly in front of the door. “Yeah, that’s where I’d stand if I wanted to get shot,” Bobby said sarcastically. We immediately shuffled to the left, where Bobby stood, never having thought of “getting shot” as a possibility.

After more knocking, several “just a minutes” yelled from the other side of the door, and an endless stream of onlookers peeking from behind the curtains, someone finally opened the door. The person answering the door was an adult female, presumably the mother of the child in question, though apparently none of the ten to twelve boys roaming the house, peeking from behind doors, and looking down on us from the top of a staircase were hers. Bobby explained the situation as the woman yawned and stared off into space, uninterested in anything Bobby was saying. Ten minutes later, we were gone. “Do you ever worry about getting shot?” we asked as we nervously walked back to the car with our backs to the house. “No,” Bobby said stoutly, “and once you do, you can no longer be an effective cop.”

Bobby continued chasing down leads, with the same scenario playing out over and over: the running, the knocking, the waiting, the conversation with an unconcerned female, the mean looks, and all the rest. None of the boys were home on this day, and by noon, Bobby had exhausted all of his leads. “Do you ever get frustrated?” we asked as we headed back to the car the last time. “They’ll turn up,” Bobby said confidently. Then, all of a sudden, he frantically checked his cell phone for the time. “Oh hell, its lunchtime,” he exclaimed. “Let’s eat.”