View full sizeNici Vance of the Oregon state medical examiner's office measures the skull of an unidentified man found Nov. 25 in Clatsop County by a hunter. CLACKAMAS -- The bones in the storage room and remains in the freezer bother Nici Vance.
A man washed up on a Lincoln County beach in 2002. A woman found inside a tent in Portland's Washington Park in 2008. A woman pulled from the Willamette River in 1993.
Who are they? Do they have family? Is anyone looking for them?
Four years ago there were 60 unidentified remains at the Oregon medical examiner's office where Vance works as a forensic anthropologist. The oldest had been on a shelf since 1968.
Vance wants to unravel their mysteries.
"Everybody wants to know where people go," she says. "These bones are somebody's loved one."
In four years, Vance has identified the remains of 12 of the people. It's happened because of her love of anthropology, dogged work, the burgeoning science of DNA-based investigations and a national database open to both law enforcement and families.
"This is absolutely my passion," Vance says. "I want that closet empty."
Dixon Tew
In 2002, a man's decomposing body came ashore on a Lincoln County beach. Detectives could not identify him through regular techniques, so the remains languished in the medical examiner's freezer.
"He was one of the first I targeted because he seemed identifiable," Vance says.
To create a DNA profile, Vance sent a tissue sample to a U.S. Justice Department-financed lab at University of North Texas. In 2007, five years after the body was found, Vance and the lab posted details on NamUs, a national website for missing or unidentified persons that was just launched.
Nothing happened for three years. Then in 2010 a Seattle family submitted a saliva swab to the North Texas lab. It created a DNA profile and submitted it to NamUs, which matched the sample of the remains in the Oregon medical examiner's freezer.
Dixon Tew, 36, was an office worker in Seattle when he disappeared April 8, 2002. His van was found a week later near Salem. Family and friends set up websites and held events around Seattle to publicize his disappearance, but no connection was made to the body on the beach until Vance took on the mystery. No one knows how Tew made it to the beach or how he died, but eight years after he disappeared his family was able to bury him.
Driven to anthropology
Vance arrived in Oregon from Montana in 1993 with a degree in anthropology. She applied for a job in the Oregon State Police crime lab but was told she needed experience. So she went to work at the Lion's Eye Bank in Portland, conducting full body exams on cadavers and removing eyes.
View full sizeNici Vance takes some measurements on a skull she recently got to identify.In late 1995, she started at the crime lab as a drug chemist, then moved to forensic biology and crime scene analysis. She earned a master's degree in anthropology in 2000.
Her mentor was John Lundy, a college instructor who had worked in the medical examiner's office in the 1980s and maintained ties as an on-call consultant. He had a doctorate from a university in South Africa, and urged Vance to go there as well. In 2005, Vance headed to the University of Pretoria, came back for a year and then returned in 2007 to complete her doctorate in anatomy.
The attraction to South Africa is that bones and skeletons studied there are less than 10 years old. In the U.S. most university skeletons are 40 years old, making it harder to account for changes in diet, environment and medicine.
"I'm not an archeologist. I don't investigate ancient remains," Vance says. "I do casework."
Lundy praises Vance for starting the identification project and for helping train police around Oregon to better handle bones found in their jurisdictions.
"I watched her from going from someone who was interested in anthropology to someone who has become an expert," Lundy says. "She is so bright she's scary -- and very dedicated to anthropology."
Vance is now one of five state police forensic biologists, splitting her time between the state police crime lab and medical examiner's office. The forensic biologists analyze evidence such as body fluids, blood, tissue and bones.
"It's absolutely the most interesting job because you never see the same thing twice," she says.
But the growing number of unidentified remains in the medical examiner's office intrigued her.
Victoria Strong
In July 2008, Portland police found the skeletal body of a fully clothed woman inside a tent at a Washington Park transient camp. She had no identification. Investigators talked to other transients about her distinctive clothing and charted her dental work but were unable to come up with a name or hints to her past.
In 2009, Vance sent tissue from the woman's rib to the University of North Texas. Six months later, her DNA profile was done, but it wasn't until early 2010 that computers matched it with a previous profile in a national law enforcement database of people with felony convictions.
The woman's name was Victoria Strong, and she had a conviction for heroin possession. Authorities notified Strong's only relative, an aunt, who had the remains cremated.
Half of Vance's identifications were made because of DNA on file with authorities.
"It's not all touchy-feely," she says.
Enormous task
Vance said two things motivated her to start the identification project -- getting more experience with bones and "becoming a better steward of these remains."
The remains of seven unidentified people are in the medical examiner's freezer. Bones are stored in containers on 8-foot-high shelves in a small, cold room near the back of the medical examiner's office in Clackamas. Labels show the year they were found, the county and sometimes a case number.
Vance's first task was to get bones out of paper bags and cardboard boxes and into plastic storage containers. Some had only a date and a location where bones were found. She created a new inventory, tracked down where and how they were found, and reprocessed the remains to current standards.
"Almost every one had some sort of paperwork or record-keeping problem," she says. "It was pretty overwhelming at first."
If there are enough bones to work with, Vance creates a biological profile -- sex, age range, height and race.
One of the biggest developments in the identification of the unknown is the ability of labs to analyze DNA from the smallest bit of tissue.
Vance sends samples from every case to UNT's Center for Human Identification, which since 2004 has received federal money to help reduce the backlog of DNA testing for state and federal agencies. The Texas lab, for free, also processes samples from relatives who hope national databases will make a "familial match" of their lost loved ones.
Vance in action
What:
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's "Science Pub"
When:
7-9 p.m. Monday, Jan. 9
Where:
McMenamins Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
Topic:
"I Dig Your Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology," with Nici Vance
Websites:
University of North Texas Center for Human Identification:
National Missing and Unidentified Persons System:
Vance and North Texas then load their information into NamUs, a national electronic database that started in 2007. Two years later it became fully searchable by both law enforcement and families wanting to solve mysteries surrounding more than 40,000 unidentified remains in the United States.
Medical examiner's offices can file preliminary information, update data as the case proceeds, show facial reconstructions, drawings and any evidence found with an unidentified body.
Vance simply calls the site "revolutionary."
Many mysteries
And occasionally there are no bones, just information.
Vance's latest case involves a woman who is thought to have committed suicide by jumping into the Willamette River in Portland. She was found Sept. 9, 1993. Her body was cremated in 1998, but Vance has her dental records, autopsy results and photos.
She was 30 to 40 years old, 5-foot-4 and 140 pounds and showed evidence of recent weight loss. She had a healed rib fracture and a Cesarean scar. Vance wants to have an artist reconstruct her face and then will put all the information into NamUs -- and see whether someone is looking for a daughter, sister, aunt or mother.
"We'll get all of her information out there and hope for the best," Vance says.
And then tackle the next of the unidentified.
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