It’s been more than twenty years since an Arizona man called sheriff’s deputies in Yavapai County, Arizona, to report a unique and disturbing discovery: while sifting through his childhood rock collection, he had found a human jawbone that had been mistakenly was mistaken for a stone. .
The county medical examiner’s office tried for years to find the owner of the abnormal piece of lower jaw, but their DNA databases turned up no matches. And then, earlier this week, one finally emerged when the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College in New Jersey announced that it had confirmed a genetic match.
The bone belonged to the late U.S. Marine Corps Captain Everett Leland Yager. There had been no mystery surrounding Yager’s death; the Orange County Register, then called the Santa Ana Register, reported that the 30-year-old Missourian had crashed and died during flight training in 1951 near the El Toro Marine Air Station in Orange County.
The surprise was that part of Yager’s jaw did not end up in his grave with the rest of his remains.
‘We have absolutely no idea how [the jawbone] ended up in the child’s collection,” said Paul Wick, public information officer for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. ‘All the circumstances surrounding it [makes this case] unique.”
In a news release from Ramapo College, the research team hypothesized that a scavenger may have picked up a piece of his body and carried it across state lines from Southern California to Arizona.
This cold case is one of two the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department was able to close thanks to the free services of the Ramapo College Forensic Genealogy Laboratory, which began working with Yavapai County a year ago.
“It was a very exciting moment,” said Cairenn Binder, the assistant director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center. Yager died on July 31, 1951, according to Yavapai County officials, and now a discovery has brought his story back to life 73 years later. “People were screaming across the room and running to each other’s computers to show each other their findings,” Binder said.
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Six students attended an intensive workshop at the center last summer and together they came to the conclusion that the bone belonged to Yager. One of the people who helped, Ethan Schwartz, was an intern in his sophomore year of high school. He is now one of the youngest people to ever help solve a forensic genetics case, according to Ramapo College.
After receiving a tip from the Ramapo team, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department collected DNA samples from Yager’s daughter, allowing Bode Technology in Lorton, Virginia, to verify the bone fragment.
Yager’s family has declined to speak to the media, but Yavapai officials said the family is grateful this piece of his body is finally being reunited with his remains, 70 years after he was buried in his hometown of Palmyra, Missouri.
Schwartz, a sophomore at Suffern High School in nearby Rockland County, N.Y., said he is grateful to have been able to contribute to a cause that feels personal to his own family history.
“I have a deep bond with our armed forces,” Schwartz said, explaining that his grandfather served in the Air Force and his great-uncle was a submarine commander in the Navy.
This summer he returns to Ramapo College to continue his research into how ethnicity plays a role in the search for genetic similarities, since most of the DNA samples on file come from people with Western European ancestry.
“Even if it’s not my major, I’ll definitely be passionate about this,” he said. “I am very grateful for the experience I gained this summer as I definitely want to continue in the future.”
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Although this multi-state saga has come to an end, David Gurney, the director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center, said we can expect to see more cases like this solved in the future.
In the past, law enforcement agencies relied solely on the FBI-operated Combined DNA Index System, which collected the genetic profiles of family members of missing persons and people who had committed crimes. But now, Gurney said, forensic labs have access to a wide range of genetic information through commercial genealogy databases, such as Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch.
These databases are populated by people who have taken DNA tests for their own interests, says Gurney, an assistant professor of law and society at Ramapo College. With millions of profiles to search, investigators can often find distant relatives of the person they are trying to locate or identify.
“It is the most revolutionary way to conduct research since the advent of DNA, because any DNA sample can now be identified, given enough work and enough time,” said Gurney, who will join Binder in 2022 founded the genealogy center.
The success of the center’s crash course in DNA matching has doubled enrollment this year, filling the class’s 15 spots and creating a growing waiting list. You don’t necessarily need a degree in history or genetics to become a forensic genealogist.
But for the public, Binder said, there is a much more practical way to solve cold cases like Yager’s: Donate your genetic information by taking a DNA test offered by a commercial genealogy database. People should consider privacy when sharing their DNA with the government, Binder said, but she believes some people are willing to accept the personal risk for the greater good.
“Your DNA could be the key piece that brings it home for us working on this [investigative] cases, solving violent crime cases, solving missing persons cases,” Binder said. ‘Every member of the public has the opportunity to make an impact.’
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.