PALOS HEIGHTS, Ill. — The Palos Heights Police Department is trying to determine the identity of bones found hanging from a tree near the Cal Sag Canal.
It was a few days after Christmas in 2022.
Some people on a bike path in the southwestern suburb noticed a bag hanging from a tree.
Now, investigators say they are trying to work backwards to try and find some answers.
“Some passersby were on the bike path in the northwest corner of Palos Heights, they observed this bag that looked suspicious in a tree and they kind of took it down and noticed that it had some amount of bones in it,” said Detective Sergeant John Parnitzke. “They notified police, and then we went out there.”
Parnitzke was called to investigate the unusual find in December of 2022. The plastic bag appeared to have been tossed off of the bridge and was also weighed down by some asphalt.
“It’s kind of consistent with someone driving down the road and throwing this bag from the roadway,” Parnitzke said. “The reason you think that is because right next to the path, is the Cal Sag Canal.”
At the time, police and the medical examiner weren’t even sure if the remains were human.
“They had some anthropologists look at it and determined that there was a mixture of bones- some human, some animal,” Parnitzke said. “It looked like two of the bones actually were lower mandibles from adult humans.”
But it wasn’t clear how old the bones were, or the circumstances on how they wound up next to the canal.
That’s when PHPD decided to work with a private lab.
Dr. Kristen Mittelman is the Chief Development Officer at Othram, a forensic genetic genealogy company based out of Texas, who’s scientists aim to help extract DNA from the bones using public databases to try and find a relative.
“That allows us to figure out where this person belongs in a family tree,” Mittelman said. “We give that information back to law enforcement and law enforcement can call the family and ask if they have someone missing and usually, they will say yes and provide a sample for DNA confirmation.”
But the catch is the process to do so can be costly, and resources between the two groups aren’t limitless.
“Like any other town, it’s tight with resources, trying to do the most with what we can,” Parnitzke said. “And this crowdfunding option came up and obviously we jumped at it.”
You can help contribute to the investigation through this crowdfunding method: https://dnasolves.com/articles/cook-county-doe-2022/