Written in Bone | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

Police investigating the disappearance of a woman in Iowa are closing in on a suspect, but to prove murder they must identify an amputated torso pulled from the Mississippi River in Ohio. A grave is unearthed at a construction site. A makeshift coffin and human

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s are all investigators have to do. Lead them to a killer An Illinois state trooper makes a gruesome discovery on the side of the road Investigators must make their case from the teeth of the unknown victim Some killers believe they have left no trace of themselves or their victims, but Forensic scientists have found ways to decipher a killer's calling card by reading clues

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on

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s located in a bend in the Mississippi River.

Davenport Iowa is known as a quiet fishing community, but on March 18, 1983 the police were visited by a concerned citizen named Marianne Roth. Marianne was worried about her friend. Joyce Clint had spoken on the phone earlier in the morning and had made plans to spend the afternoon together but Joyce had not shown up. Joyce had been under a lot of stress in recent weeks. Her marriage was in bad shape and she and her husband, Jim, were considering a divorce. Marianne described Joyce as a devoted mother, not the type to just run away without a word for the sake of her son Bart Joyce had tried to keep the marriage together but she was not naive Marianne handed over a tape that Joyce had made several days earlier After her disappearance, Joyce had planned to use it as evidence if the divorce went to trial.

When investigators played the tape, they quickly realized that Joyce had secretly recorded an incriminating conversation between her and Jim in which she confronted her husband about the money. that he was allegedly stealing from her chiropractic business in response to the threats, Jim told Joyce that if she exposed him he would put her head under the pillow, suffocate her, and then cut her into little pieces, although it was wild talk. The police are used to hearing this type of violence. threats from couples facing divorce to investigators it was more likely that joyce had decided to leave town with the tape safe at marianne's house.

He could slip away until the divorce case came to trial. That theory was supported the next day. Joyce's friends discovered her car parked near the airport inside the vehicle police found no evidence of a struggle or signs of foul play for investigators everything suggested that Joyce had disappeared on purpose corporal jerry mccabe of the davenport police department worked In the investigation, at first it seemed like a possible family argument where she might have left and not spoken to anyone for a while, but the persistence of Joyce Clint's friends convinced the police to investigate the disappearance. They paid a visit to Jim Clint.

Jim quickly admitted that he and Joyce had gotten into a fight on the morning of the 18th. He stormed out and went to the marina where he was keeping his boat to cool off due to rising flood waters. He decided not to go out on the river, secured his boat and returned home at which point he said Joyce was gone along with a closet. Filled with clothes and four thousand dollars of his money, investigators verified his alibi with a visit to the marina. Did he see it on March 18? A restaurant manager confirmed that she saw Clint that morning, around 11am, she saw Clint loading

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garbage bags onto his boat, she said he left the dock on his boat, returned some time later and then left again .

This witness's account contradicted Jim's alibi. Detectives decided to take a closer look at Jim Clint's background. Jim Clint's drinking and womanizing were well known in the small community of Davenport police learned that he had been having a blatant affair with one of his patients in hopes of finding out more. Investigators located the woman. She told investigators that the day Joyce disappeared. Jim had invited her around noon. She had a surprise. He said Joyce. They agreed to divorce and had left town now that they could finally be together. Joyce's threats to expose Jim's alleged embezzlement, along with information about his extramarital affair, gave investigators reason to believe that Jim Clint had motive. to kill his wife, but without any hard evidence that the crime had been committed, it was still just speculation, but on April 15, almost a month after Joyce's disappearance, the Mississippi River would offer a gruesome clue several miles away. south of Davenport.

Two fishermen noticed something floating in the river. When they got closer, they could see that it was the remains of something human, they fled the scene and called 9-1-1. Investigators went to the river bank and pulled the body out of the water. It was a female torso severed just above the navel and just below the upper thighs even for the most experienced

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the scene was difficult to understand a limited autopsy determined the victim was a Caucasian woman who had been in the water between two weeks and four months the cut marks appear to have been made by a chainsaw with a 5 16 inch chain aware of the violent threats jim had made on the tape investigators believed they had found joyce clint but were a long way from proving murder to make their case, they would first have to identify the remains and that wouldn't be easy, investigators turned to.

For renowned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow of the University of Oklahoma, his approach is simple and basically what we're trying to do is look at the skeleton, the 200 bones and 32 teeth, and we try to answer two questions mainly: who is this person? person and how they died the snow experience allows you to develop a profile from the bare bones even with just the torso to work with the snow could tell a lot about the victim to determine their age studied the area of ​​the pelvis known as the pubis Synthesis, The surfaces of this joint undergo some fairly regular changes with age, in younger people there is a system of strong grooves, one could say that in ridges, they begin to gradually disappear at 20, 30 and 40 years, so on until you end up with a fairly flat joint.

Featureless surface based on ridge detail on victim's pelvis. Snow believed the victim was between 26 and 34 years old. He then studied the dimensions of the remaining leg and hip bones and estimated that he was between five feet and five feet six inches tall and weighed. between 125 and 140 pounds. Although Joyce Clint fit those measurements, police soon learned that so did dozens of other missing women. Until investigators could narrow down their pool of potential victims, the identity of the severed torso would remain a mystery police in davenport, iowa, wrestled with two cases involving the disappearance of joyce klimp and the discovery of a severed torso pulled from the mississippi river, they believed the cases were connected and believed joyce's husband jim was responsible, but until they could positively identify the remains they could not prove murder using the description of the victim provided by forensic anthropologist dr. clyde snow davenport police lieutenant dennis kern began a computerized search for all missing women in the region the computer returned the names of 17 missing women

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were able to eliminate eight of the women as they had disappeared after the torso was finally found two of the women and three others did not match the physical description.

When we finished, we ended up with four people, one of whom was Joyce Clint. The investigation took a more limited focus. The researchers decided to make another visit. Jim Clinton returned home this time with a search warrant in his garage they found what they were looking for: a chainsaw with a 5 16 inch chain the same width as the cut marks on the body, the technicians processed the chainsaw with indicator fluid that turns pink in the presence of blood covered every square inch of the saw not a single drop of blood or tissue could be found either jim clint was smarter than researchers had imagined or the torso found in the river It wasn't Joyce Clint There was only one way to be sure The police had to find a way to positively identify the remains Although DNA analysis had not yet been developed In 1983 there were new ways to identify an individual from genetic markers in the blood enzymes blood samples were requested from jim clint and his son bart a comparison with the victim's blood showed genetic consistency with bart additional testing of blood from joyce clint's parents also showed consistent patterns genetic information alone did not was enough to establish the identity but of the four missing women only Joyce Clint matched both the physical description described by Dr.

Snow and the genetic description provided by the blood tests, the conclusion was unequivocal when observing the women who met With these physical characteristics, what were the chances that any of them would have matched those four? genetic image and the odds were infinitesimal the torso belonged to joyce clint and all the evidence pointed to her husband jim as the killer there is a division of money uh properties and that he was going to lose a lot of things were going to be taken away from him because she was fed up and ready to go and the reason the bride was there, uh, there were so many that she thought they were on their way to a happier life.

Jim was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. The police believe that Jim. He executed his plan on the morning of March 18 after murdering Joyce in her home, driving her remains to a remote location where he dismembered her with a chainsaw, used his boat to dispose of the body parts and saw, then placed his car near the airport to mislead investigators although he maintained his innocence during the trial the jury found jim clint guilty of second degree murder he was sentenced to 50 years in prison jim clinton thought that dismemberment would prevent him and his victim from being identified in Ohio, A murderer tried to avoid prosecution by keeping his horrible secret buried deep in the ground On June 20, 1990 In the small northern Ohio town of Illyria, a construction worker discovered a long-buried secret.

His excavator struck a hard object resting several feet underground. It appeared to be a wooden box as he approached the discovery, he was overcome by a horrible smell and realized that he had unearthed the makeshift grave to which he called Police Lt. Dan Jakel of the Illyria Police Department, who was sent immediately to the site due to construction. The scene had already been compromised, but we were concerned about the evidence that the excavator was pushing the evidence down. There are pieces and wood that could have been transported 25 30 40 yards away, in addition to the initial scene that we had to protect.

If their only problem was rain clouds threatening to destroy possible traces of evidence with the site now exposed, they would only have this one chance to get what they needed to preserve any possible finds. Investigators had to treat the scene as an archaeological dig searching the earth for lost animals. bullets jewelry or other identification with deliberate precision The initial search of the construction site turned up no clues that could tell investigators the identity of the victim after several hours the severely decomposed body wrapped in garbage bags was turned over despite their continued efforts no additional evidence or identification was found.

I discovered that the police needed to know who was in the grave before they could discover how he had gotten there for help. The researchers called in distinguished professor of anthropology Dr. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University. I went out and examined the body and collected some materials for the purpose of providing as much detail about that individual in life as possible from the condition of the pelvis. Examiners were able to determine that the body was that of a woman between 28 and 30 years old. An examination of the shape and proportions of the skull told Les that the victim was Caucasian.

Dr. Lovejoy measured the thigh and arm bones and factored them into an equation to determine the victim's height. She was surprisingly tall, almost six feet. Dr. Lovejoy had given investigators their first glimpse of how alive the victim appeared. It was up to them to discover her identity. Detectives began investigating unsolved missing persons cases, but in all of those cases none of the missing women fit the description of the buried body. Investigators turned their attention to the only other piece of evidence, although it looked like a long-term draftsman was called in to measure the fractured pieces of the makeshift coffin and make a detailed illustration of it.

TheInvestigators provided the illustration to the local newspaper along with a description of the unidentified woman. Days later, a woman called to say she thought she recognized the makeshift coffin. The woman recalled admiring the piece in her friend's apartment. Sandra Stuller told police that it had been more than three years since Sandra disappeared without saying goodbye. There was no speculation about what happened to her old friend but she was able to provide police with valuable information, such as that the woman found at the construction site, Sandra Stuller, was six feet tall, although she was still unsure if she had identified her victim, investigators were the only lead detectives to locate an aunt and uncle in Sandra's life.

In the area, like the witness who identified the chest, they had not seen their niece in the last three years. Relatives said that shortly before losing contact, Sandra had rekindled a relationship with her ex-husband, Doug Hartman. He had been a loving and supportive husband. at first but as the years went by he became abusive, Sandra eventually left him but Doug wanted her back and against her family's wishes he decided to give her another chance and the family told Sandra that this was one bad move, you shouldn't go back. to douglas hartman, in fact, if you decide to do that, you are no longer part of this family, but sandra stayed with doug and the family cut ties that had not heard from her since now, the investigators needed to pick up the story where the Aunt and Uncle's story ended, they located the manager of Sandra's last known apartment, where she lived just before she disappeared in 1987.

She had paid the rent in

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, but apparently her reunion with Doug had been short-lived. Sandra had been living alone at the time. The manager recalled that the circumstances surrounding Sandra's departure were strange. In December 1987, he saw a man taking Sandra's belongings out of the apartment and putting them into a rented truck. The manager had not seen the man before. He did not see Sandra again that time. day or ever again sandra had left her apartment without saying a word investigators suspected that the man moving sandra's things was doug hartman to test that theory they went to the truck rental agency in one of the receipts from december 1987 they found What did they come for?

Do you remember anything? about this gentleman, the name of sandra's ex-husband, doug hartman, i appreciate it, it was time to question doug, but there were no records of him living in town, but the detectives managed to find a relative who was still in the area and told police he hadn't heard. of doug, since he went to live with his grandmother in fredericksburg, virginia, a few years ago, detectives wondered what had prompted doug to leave town, but their theories would make no sense until they could prove that the buried remains belong to sandra stuller, detectives in illyria, ohio, believed that the body and makeshift coffin unearthed at a construction site belonged to sandra stuller and suspected that her ex-husband doug hartman had put it there.

News of the investigation into Sandra Stuller's whereabouts spread quickly. A manager at a local bank contacted detectives who had also been searching for Sandra and had stopped paying rent on a safe deposit box. Investigators obtained a search warrant. The contents of the box included Sandra's divorce decree, her will, and some gold and diamond jewelry. It's not the kind of valuable items that a person would carelessly abandon unless they were Detective Dan. Jakel thought they had no choice and that reinforced my idea that the person we discovered on Shatton Road was actually Sandra Stuller, but I had to prove it.

Detectives were running out of ways to accomplish that goal. Desperate for information, they connected Sandra's social security number. number in a police database, they got a hit, sandra had been in a car accident shortly before she disappeared, the report mentioned that she had been taken to the hospital for treatment, which included x-rays, it was the break detectives were looking for when I found out that a chest x-ray had been taken, I knew this would help the case and when I contacted Dr. Lovejoy he told me that if I could get that original x-ray there was a good chance he could identify the remains.

Investigators visited the hospital and cited sandra stuller's x-rays. Now that they had a source of comparison, they initially turned to the expertise of forensic anthropologist dr. owen lovejoy when we looked at his skeleton and compared it to these thorax films we realized that there were a number of very special characters that were very rare one of them was the fact that he only had 11 ribs when a normal individual normally has 12. that is a fairly rare anomaly another is that the individual had suffered a fracture of his right clavicle and so these were two The characters that matched the two bones that we had were powerful evidence, but not conclusive.

Lovejoy then had to examine the very fine details preserved within the bone. There, small features called trabeculars are as unique as the features of a fingerprint for comparison. Dr. Lovejoy began. By re-X-raying the bones with a powerful machine called a faxotron that produces high-resolution images of the bone, he completed them and then compared the trabeculae one by one. We did this in this particular case and found that they were, in fact, an exact match. that there was no doubt that these were the remains of sandra stuller the victim had finally been identified investigators now needed to establish and prove the reason for her death by reviewing her financial records they believed they had found the answer before her disappearance sandra had inherited for one hundred thousand dollars when her mother died she had created a fifty thousand dollar mutual fund and had been living off the interest, but a letter in the file signed by sandra after she had been murdered requested that her assets be transferred to an account in fredericksburg virginia that account was in the name of doug hartman sandra stuller had been murdered for her money and through bank records and subpoenas i was able to trace those 51 thousand dollars in douglas hartman's personal checking account.

She had a reason and so they brought doug back. to Ohio for questioning when investigators confronted him with all the evidence, he began to break down. He confessed to killing her, but claimed it was an accident. The police believed otherwise after murdering Sandra and burying her body. Doug fled to Virginia, where he had everything. assets transferred to his bank account, it took a jury less than six hours to find Doug Hartman guilty of aggravated murder, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and he was then sentenced to life in prison, even though Sandra Stuller's body had been buried for more than three years.

Investigators were able to solve her murder from the ground up in Illinois. Investigators had even less work with what stretches from Chicago to Springfield. I-55 is one of the busiest highways in Illinois. State police regularly travel its length chasing speeding drivers, but in March. 10 1986 It was not a speeder that caught the policeman's attention, something was burning on the side of the road when the officer approached he thought it was a mannequin that had been set on fire but when he got closer he realized it was something much more Disturbing was the charred mass of a human body.

After extinguishing the fire, the police called for reinforcements the next morning. Evidence technicians from the Illinois Division of Criminal Investigations began processing the area for clues. The scene offered few clues as to who might have committed this brutal act. The only potential evidence was a set of tire tracks printed in the ground, but on a busy road they could have belonged to anyone, technicians made a plaster cast of the tire tracks in the hope that a suspect would emerge. and then could be located in place. But finding a suspect would be difficult, if not impossible, until detectives could identify the remains.

At the autopsy, the examiner concluded that the victim had died from blunt force trauma to the head. The only identifying features that survived the fire were his teeth, a pearl necklace and a ring. that carried the letter e were removed from the victim due to his small stature and thin hip dimensions, the examiner believed that the victim was between 18 and 25 years old and possibly Hispanic to Lieutenant Carlos Heavy of the criminal investigations department of Illinois, the information was not much to do in the first order of business is identifying who the victim is in this particular case.

We had difficulties due to the fact that we did not have a photograph for everyone when we were canvassing, however, researchers began questioning people in the neighborhoods. Around the scene of the fire, an employee at a nearby gas station recalled selling a can of gasoline the night before helping investigators create a composition. The sketch was published, but no one came forward to name the suspect. Investigators launched a statewide media campaign. An avalanche of clues came in, but after two weeks detectives still couldn't link the remains to any missing person cases with the entire case on hinge and identification investigators sought help from the state's department of forensic anthropology after taking a Life-size x-ray of the victim. skull they built a three-dimensional model by sculpting a face in plasticine, it may not be identical but hopefully it would spark a spark of recognition from the public photographs of the victim's reconstructed head and ring were sent to the local press, but again no one came forward to identify the young woman several weeks after the chances of solving the case diminished, a methodical killer was still walking the streets after several weeks, investigators were no closer to solving the brutal murder of an unidentified woman whose body had been set on fire and left burning on the side of an Illinois highway, desperate to identify the remains, investigators sent the victim's skull and teeth to Dr.

Steven Smith, a consultant in forensic odontology. In the worst circumstances, teeth survive quite well and that is why it became very useful for the uniqueness of human dentition, we can find the uniqueness that everyone has in their dentition and that is enough to separate us from one human being to another. The arch of the jaw suggested the victim was most likely Asian, not Hispanic. After studying the general anatomy, dr. smith examined each tooth individually, this would be the temporary cement which would indicate that this person will likely return to the dentist and I see some bone loss in this area, this would indicate periodontal disease and that the person was probably seeing a periodontist.

This type of dental history gave Dr. Smith new insight into the victim's age as he looked at this information and when I got to my independent evaluation I thought this person had to be at least 40 years old. 38 to 40 maybe 42 43 somewhere like that, but no more than five years apart. Dr. Smith's detailed analysis had exposed a critical flaw in the victim's original description: he could not have been between 18 and 25 years old, as previously thought to show. she was about 20 years older than that, in this particular case we were fighting because we were chasing a missing person between 18 and 25 who was not our victim, so when it occurred to them it was like someone had just opened a door , you already know.

Nearly two months after the burning body was found, detectives went back to the state police computer network and changed the victim's description. The new findings bore fruit within hours of modifying their search. Investigators received a call from the nearby Dupage County Sheriff's Department. They had a missing person. case that matched the new description illinois state police met with dupage county sheriffs to discuss the case they learned berlinda anderson was a 43-year-old housewife reported missing by her sister in early march, born in the philippines, whom her husband william had come to the united states to marry, the fact that this victim's name began with the letter e led investigators to believe they were on the right track.

Deputies told investigators they had met with William Anderson shortly after his wife was reported missing. They questioned him about his wife and his marriage. it had not been a traditional courtship during the interview anderson admitted that he had met linda throughfrom a classified act she was looking for an american husband he was looking for company the relationship started well anderson said that she seemed very happy with the comforts of middle class american, but as the marriage progressed, berlinda became very homesick, he insisted that erlinda not was missing; In fact, he had seen her board a plane bound for the Philippines in early March, following William Anderson's story.

Dupage County investigators questioned her Linda's friends. They confirmed that her friend had been unhappy with her life in the US mainly due to her marriage to William and that she had been looking forward to returning home, but it was strange that they had not heard from her friend. of her in months. William Anderson's inconsistent story along with Dr. Smith's forensic analysis led investigators to believe that the victim found burned on the side of the road was Erlinda Anderson and that would make her husband the prime suspect in her murder, but until At the time there was no evidence to prove it.

Investigators from the Illinois Department. Criminal investigations were getting closer to identifying the charred remains found along a road. They believed the victim was 43-year-old Herlinda Anderson, but until they could be sure, police could not make a case against the main suspect, her husband William, alone with the victim. teeth to work with investigators subpoenaed erlinda's dental records, they were sent to forensic dentist dr. made a visit to the airline anderson had actually purchased a ticket to manila in erlinda's name but a week before her body was found records showed that william anderson cashed the ticket berlinda never boarded a plane to the philippines william anderson had been caught in a blatant lie, but if Anderson had killed his wife, the question now before investigators was why an additional background check revealed that Erlinda had been William's fifth wife.

Based on a search of Anderson's phone records, they discovered that he likely did not intend for her to be the last. Many of the invoices reflected calls to one of Anderson's co-workers. The woman who was married reluctantly admitted that she and Anderson had been having an affair. Anderson complained to her that Linda was constantly spending her money and always sending gifts to her friends and family. In the Philippines, the day after her body was found, William took her to a romantic dinner and told her to leave her husband and marry him. Instead, she asked Anderson about do you know what's wrong with your wife and Anderson told her don't worry about me. wife, she will not return, the case was now in the hands of the forensic dentist, Dr.

Steven Smith, when he made an identification. Smith overlays living dental records with x-rays taken after death in this case. Here I can grab it and move it and everything. Suddenly I see a clear image it was blurry now it is totally clear it means one movie perfectly overlaps the other in me if you ask me if it matches I could say yes by watching this movie I would be sure that this movie matches that movie and They could say that this set of teeth belongs to those remains. After months of frustration, the burned body had finally been identified as his Linda Anderson and with a new romance brewing, William Anderson had reasons to get rid of her.

There was still a lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder. investigators paid him On another visit they asked him to follow them to the police station for further questioning while the police began questioning a warrant was obtained to search Anderson's car, although the treads on the tires did not match those found in the crime scene, the trunk and the objects it contained were splattered. with red stains the indicative tests confirmed the presence of human blood on a jacket and on an iron tire the blood was too deteriorated to make a detailed comparison but it was more incriminating evidence the results of the examination were taken to the police william anderson was arrested under arrest, investigators believe Anderson used tire to hit his Linda in the head after she was dead, drove her body down Interstate 55, doused her body with gasoline thinking all her problems would burn up in the fire resulting without the ideas. of forensic odontology could have escaped without a trace a jury found william anderson guilty of murder and sentenced him to life in prison some murderers are determined to keep the identity of their victims a secret when they are successful their actions threaten to go unpunished but Forensic scientists They can breathe life into a dying investigation and find justice

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in your bones.