Forensic shows on television use science that almost magically reveals decades-old details about dead bodies. We look into the truth about solving murders with stable isotopes.
The (Isotope) Message in The Bones
It was definitely a homicide. The woman’s skull was missing the lower jaw but still contained some brain tissue. It was found in May 2003 by an inquisitive dog walking with its owner on a hike among the mountain hemlock and pines of the Shady Rest campground in Mammoth Lakes, California.
Several days later, police discovered a shallow grave nearby with more human remains, mostly bones, scattered over the ground. Anything buried in a forest is fair game for foraging coyotes and black bears, which had found the body, gnawed the bones, and moved the pieces around. Bits of clothing — a size 32A bra, a small Bass shoe, and a Cold Air Design coat — as well as a Jaclyn Smith wristwatch also turned up. The watch, which had been covered by snow through the winter, was still running.
A forensic examination solidified the suspicion of murder with the finding of two gashes, consistent with cuts made by a knife blade, on a piece of bone. But who was the victim, and how did she meet such a terrible fate? There was only, one initial clue to her identity. Park Service employees remembered a strange couple — a man and a woman — who several months earlier had planned to stay for an indefinite time at the campground. The woman was petite, no more than four feet eight inches tall, and looked “Asian.” The man was Caucasian, much taller, portly, and seemed gruff, abrasive, and mean-spirited.
While the man was inquiring about the campsite, the woman approached one of the Park Service workers and confided that she was afraid of her partner, presumed to be her husband. The park employee gave the fearful woman a card for a local shelter for women. There was talk that the woman, who had long dark hair and high cheekbones, had been a mail-order bride. No one recalled seeing the couple leave. Apart from that, there was very little to go on.
The case fell into the lap of Detective Sergeant Paul Dostie, a 23-year veteran of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. Murders were not the average cup of tea for Dostie — he had only handled two in his career previously. The usual crimes the police get in this mountainous recreational area, with a population of about 8,000, were barroom brawls, the occasional date rape, and burglaries. There were considerably higher odds of cops bumping into long-distance runners — who love training in the high altitude — than coming across a homicide. But the search for answers to the identity of the dead woman in the forest, and to how she died, became Dostie’s life mission. Although he retired in 2009, Dostie has never let the case go.
“It isn’t a closed case until you have a suspect,” says Dostie, who in his spare time is involved in finding the remains of dead American service-men from World War II. He also garnered publicity more recently for his efforts, along with those of his specially trained cadaver dog Buster, to find remains that may be linked to the Black Dahlia murder of 1947 in Los Angeles.
Dostie, a cop from the old school who values persistence, intuition, and traditional gumshoe tactics, found his quest to identify the victim taking him into a world of crime-scene science that he — and many others in law enforcement — never knew existed. He’s shown a refreshing acceptance of cutting-edge investigative techniques. In his quest to solve the Mammoth Lakes murder, Dostie has enlisted the help of a wide array of forensic anthropologists and pathologists, DNA experts,
and geologists. Those experts have been so impressed by the retired cop’s determination that they have provided their help for free. As a result, Dostie has come tantalizingly close to discovering the identity of the dead woman.
“Stable isotopes” may not be your usual subject for dinner-table discussion, but the science divines important clues from what we drink and eat. The old adage “you are what you eat,” according to Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, a scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, really does explain in a fundamental way how isotopes are so useful in crime fighting.
A key to understanding stable isotopes, says Meier-Augenstein, is the fact that rainfall, which sustains plant life, is not the same everywhere on the planet. As a result, levels of isotopes of some basic elements, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, change depending on where the rain falls from the upper atmosphere. For instance, the rain falling to the west of the Sierra Nevada range will have a different mix or ratio of oxygen isotopes than precipitation falling to the east of the mountains. The same is also true for hydrogen. This means that part of the answer to Dostie’s puzzle lies in the way the rains fall in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
In recent years, scientists have been able to create global maps of the subtle differences in stable-isotope concentration in rainwater. Since the overwhelming majority of us drink water and eat fruits and vegetables from sources close to where we live, the level of stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes found in our hair, teeth, and bones provides a clue as to where we live. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes reveal whether a person is a vegetarian or meat-eater. The time frame can be as short as two weeks before death or as long as several years — enough to provide investigators with a road map to a person’s life so they can identify a corpse and maybe solve a murder. If bone is used, scientists can trace a person’s origins as far back as more than two decades.
Unlike DNA, which is a virtually foolproof way to confirm a person’s identity — assuming there are adequate samples to compare — stable isotopes don’t identify a body so much as focus investigators on locales a victim frequented, excluding as much as 90 percent of the world.
“Stable-isotope data will not find the needle in the haystack, but will go some way to reduce the haystack to a manageable size,” explains Meier-Augenstein, one of a small group of scientists who specializes in isotopes.
While at first glance the importance of stable isotopes might not be apparent, experts say the science has many potential uses in crime-fighting. It has proven to be useful in tracking the movements of suspects and victims, as well as linking evidence such as drugs or explosives to a particular suspect.
“Linkages can be used to connect individual cells in a [terrorist] network by linking bomber to bomb-making lab,” Meier-Augenstein wrote in an email. “Human-tissue (hair and nail) isotope signatures can provide information on the route through which people were smuggled/ trafficked into a country.”
Paul Dostie knew nothing about stable isotopes when he first pondered the jaw less skull he held in his hand at the Mammoth Lakes Police Department squad room. The murder case had started off well, with a strong indication that it involved an abusive relationship. Artist sketches of the couple, based on the recollections of eyewitnesses who saw the pair in the park, were widely circulated in the area. But after a year, there were no leads. Adding to the complications, a DNA analysis as well as a forensic anthropologist’s examination of the skull determined that the victim wasn’t Asian, but rather 100 percent Native American.
Despite the frustrations and uncertainty, Dostie pressed on and took the case in another direction. Slowly, some tantalizing leads emerged. DNA in the hair of the dead woman showed that she was genetically close to people of southern Mexico and Guatemala. After running the DNA through databases kept at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the University of California at Davis, experts zeroed that in more. The DNA was a perfect match with a sample taken years earlier of the Zapotec people from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. One expert went a step further: The sample indicated the victim was actually related to a person who gave one of the Oaxaca samples.
While trolling through scientific literature, Dostie came across a scholarly paper about stable isotopes. He thought it might help focus the investigation and contacted experts in Canada who could help. After pulverizing one of the victim’s teeth, the experts said that the concentration of isotopes showed that she had grown up as a child subsisting on a diet of corn — a sign of poor economic status and another indication of Central American or southern Mexican ancestry. More isotope testing of a bone fragment showed the victim had lived most of the last ten years of her life drinking water found only in southern Mexico, says Dostie. During the last two years of her life, the isotopes indicated, the woman had traveled to Southern California.
Dostie went to Oaxaca with a reconstruction photograph of the victim. The area is a poor region of Mexico, where the indigenous people toil to make a living, and are the butt of much intolerance from other Mexicans. “All Oaxacan people are very short,” observes Dostie, just like the woman who died at Shady Rest. “There is a lot of prejudice against them.”
Based on the isotope analysis and DNA testing, Dostie thought there was a good chance that he might strike pay dirt. Sure enough, in Oaxaca a woman said the photo looked like her stepdaughter. Heartened by the news, Dostie tracked down some possible relatives and ran a DNA comparison. To his disappointment, there was no match.
But Dostie is certain from the results of the stable-isotope testing that he is looking in the right area — the right part of the haystack, if you will — for the needle that is the identity of the Shady Rest victim. Every time the photo reconstruction of the woman’s face appears in the newspapers or on television, Dostie believes there is a chance he may get lucky. “I am hoping that at some point, someone will take an interest in this case,” he says.
“Schoolboys playing near the Royal canal in Dublin discovered a dismembered human body. The torso had been cut in half, the arms and legs severed.”
The Royal Canal in Dublin, Ireland, is a thin ribbon of water that is no longer used to move goods to market. After decades of disuse, it’s seen a revival as a hiking path, as well as other forms of recreation. In March 2005, a group of schoolboys playing along the canal made an unexpected, macabre discovery: a dismembered human body that had been in the water for some time. The torso had been cut in half, with the arms cut off at the shoulders and the legs severed at the groin. There was no head. The penis was also missing.
At first glance, police said, the corpse was believed to have been that of a white man. But as one forensic expert later noted, the skin had undergone massive pigment change in the water, turning completely white. It was only after closer examination that the body parts showed true skin pigment: The victim had had dark skin and was likely from Africa, the Caribbean, or possibly America, according to one expert. A closer look at what was left of his pubic hair showed it had what was described as “Africoid characteristics.” Raising more suspicion that a person from Africa was involved were cuts on the back of the torso that suggested a ritual killing, said one expert.
Whoever killed the victim wanted to punish and obliterate him, and clearly the man wasn’t a native son of Eire. But apart from that, the local Irish police, known as Garcia, had no clue about who he was. There were fingerprints on the corpse, but they didn’t match any in Ireland’s database.
For help, the Garcia turned to Meier-Augenstein in Scotland. According to a summary of the investigation shown to us by Meier-Augenstein, police provided him with a complete set of fingernails, several strands of pubic hair, and a slice of bone taken from the femur, still covered with bits of flesh. As a basis for comparison, the police also provided Meier-Augenstein samples of hair and fingernails from a living volunteer who had been residing and working in Dublin for a known period of time.
After using maggots to clean the piece of femur, parts of the bone were pulverized and treated for testing. Bones take a long time to develop or remodel. This remodeling is faster at the ends of long bones like the femur than in the middle section, says Meier-Augenstein. Water taken up by a person plays a role in the way bones develop, so that the isotope signature of water consumed earlier in a person’s life will be best reflected in the middle section of the bone. Tests of the bone from the Dublin canal showed that the older segments had an isotope signature for oxygen that the scientist says was “indicative of a hot, low-altitude coastal region near the equator,” which could mean anywhere from the east coast of Brazil to the Horn of Africa and on eastward to the west coast of India. More testing led investigators to home in on Africa — particularly Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya-as likely places of origin for the victim.
Hydrogen-isotope tests on the nails and pubic hair, when compared with those taken from the control subject, provided another clue. The isotope levels indicated that the victim had lived for at least seven months prior to his death in or near Dublin. Combined with the analysis of the bone sample, experts estimated that the victim had come to Ireland a little more than six years before he was killed, says Meier-Augenstein.
As useful as the isotope results were in showing where the victim came from, they still couldn’t provide his identity. But the tests allowed the police in Dublin to take a DNA sample from a young boy whose father had disappeared suddenly. The sampling determined that the body in the canal was that of Farah Swaleh Noor, a 38-year-old man from Somalia who had been born in Kenya and emigrated to Ireland about seven years before his murder.
Armed with a positive identification of the victim, the Garcia arrested two sisters — Charlotte and Linda Mulhall, who were 31 and 23, respectively-later dubbed the “Scissor Sisters” for the way they cut up Noor. According to evidence later submitted at trial, the girls and their mother, Kathleen, were living a trashy, marginal life in Dublin. Drugs and alcohol seemed to be a staple of their existence. The murder took place after Noor, the sisters, and their mother had spent a night drinking heavily in Dublin, topped off with some Ecstasy pills. Noor had been dating Kathleen, who was married, and the relationship was tempestuous and allegedly abusive. Back at Kathleen’s apartment, Noor made the mistake of making sexual advances toward Linda, which angered her mother. The altercation escalated and finally Kathleen told her daughters to “just kill him for me,” at which point Charlotte picked up a knife and slashed Noor across the throat. Her sister Linda then used a hammer to beat Noor on the head.
Evidence which later surfaced in court showed that Linda and Charlotte took Noor’s body into the bathroom, where they spent hours cutting it up with a box cutter and putting the pieces in black plastic trash bags. The sisters dumped most of the body in the Royal Canal, but puzzled over what to do with the head. Finally, they took it in a bag to a park, where they buried it. Linda later returned to the park, dug up the head, and smashed it with a hammer before reburying it.
After confessing, Linda was found guilty of manslaughter and Charlotte of murder. They both got lengthy prison sentences. Kathleen pleaded guilty to concealing evidence and got a five-year sentence. Noor’s head and penis still have not been found.
“In 2012, police in South Salt Lake, Utah, were able to use stable isotopes to link skeletal remains to a young woman, Nikole Bakoles, who’d been missing for more than 12 years.”
As the use of stable isotopes spreads and becomes more accepted in the world of forensic science, investigators are using it to solve a variety of murder arid missing-persons cases. In 2012, police in South Salt Lake, Utah, were able to use stable isotopes to link skeletal remains to a young woman who’d been missing for more than 12 years. The bones had been found by hunters along the Great Salt Lake and were determined to be those of 20-year-old Nikole “Niki” Bakoles. Described by her family to reporters as a free spirit, Bakoles and her boyfriend moved in 1998 to Utah, where they had a baby girl. Bakoles traveled back and forth to Seattle before her family lost touch with her. Finally, in 2003, the family filed a missing-persons report with police. According to news accounts, police used samples of hair from the remains to show that the deceased had been traveling in the northwestern part of the United States.
After police used the isotope samples to match the traveling pattern of the victim — dubbed “Saltair Sally” because of the location where her remains were found — with those in the Bakoles missing-persons report, a match was made through DNA. The case of Nikole Bakoles had been solved on one level. But police still have not made an arrest in what appears to be a case of foul play. Bakoles’s young daughter is reportedly living with relatives of the boyfriend.
The Bakoles case is a prime example of how stable isotopes can provide crucial links between bits of evidence to solve a crime. The isotopes may not solve every missing-persons case or murder mystery, but, as Meier-Augenstein stresses, they can be the clincher to tie together important strands of evidence. In the case of drug investigations, isotopes can show differences between samples of cocaine, indicating that different drug-trafficking organizations are at work, he says. The wine and liquor industries have reportedly used isotopic analysis to discover fake or adulterated products.
“In short, stable isotopes are a powerful tool for intelligence-led policing,” concludes Meier-Augenstein, “helping law-enforcement agencies to manage their inquiries and resources in a much more efficient way.”
For Paul Dostie, the issue is no longer scientific efficiency, but whether he can get a big break that not only tells him who the Shady Rest victim is, but also who killed her. He thinks the man who accompanied the victim to the park may have felt some remorse about what he’d done, since he buried her in such a nice spot, “up on a mountain in a pine forest. He almost went out of his way to put her in a pretty place, which I thought was pretty interesting.”
If science helps solve the riddles surrounding the body at Shady Rest, Dostie is positive the killer will be found, because the couple was a pair that someone, somewhere, must remember seeing. If that happens, then the case will be broken.
“We will put it together and put the guy in prison,” says Dostie.
In case you were curious, they did finally solve this case. … Well, technically they solved this case even if you were not curious, but since we’re not cats, we should feel fine being curious. Now if you really want to get your Geek on, you can read about the latest improvements in isotope use in forensics, although honestly we’re not sure anyone should ever be that curious.
