Thursday, officials revealed that they had found the skull of a teenager from Indiana who died more than 150 years ago. It was found in the wall of a house in Illinois in 1978.
A schedule from the Kane County Coroner’s Office shows that the skull was found by the Batavia home’s owner while they were remodeling the house. The police started to look into it, but the case went cold, and the head was sent to the Batavia Depot Museum to be stored.
The skull was forgotten until March 2021, when museum staff found it while checking their inventory. The cops were called and the skull was sent to the coroner’s office.
Working with Othram Laboratories, a forensic lab in Texas that helps police, the office was able to make a DNA profile of the skull that showed it belonged to Esther Granger, a 17-year-old woman from Merrillville, Indiana, who died while giving birth in 1866.
Investigators matched the DNA profile to Wayne Silvar, Granger’s great-great-grandson, which proved she was who she said she was. The city paid to bury the skull at West Batavia Cemetery in August of this year.
It’s not clear how Granger’s head got to Batavia. The papers show that she was buried in Lake County, Indiana. In a news release, Kane County Coroner Rob Russell said he thought that grave robbers might have taken her body and sold it to doctors who want to learn more about how the body works.
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