Behind the Yellow Tape

by Jarrett Hallcox

To assist with our search for the remains, we had brought with us a set of body divining rods, similar to the ones Dr. Arpad Vass has demonstrated for the forensic school at the Body Farm. The use and effectiveness of these rods is extremely controversial—just mentioning them in our first book, Bodies We’ve Buried, has led to our being bombarded by e-mails and vilified in chat rooms and blogs by those whom we shall call by their Latin scientific name, Nothingus betterus todoerus . All we did was simply mention that Dr. Vass showed how these rods seem to work. No tax dollars are involved, and the demonstration isn’t even done during classroom time. We still contend that it’s an astounding demonstration predicated on scientific research.

  How it is hypothesized to work is like this: bone has piezoelectrical properties when it is under pressure. This means that, theoretically, buried bones may emit electrical waves that stream upward from their location. If they are not blocked or redirected by roots, concrete, or anything else that might be in their way, these waves are thought to interact with Earth’s natural electromagnetic field. Thus, if one walks over a buried person with the divining rods, the disruption of the piezoelectric waves may cause the rods to move or cross. Divining or “dowsing” for water has been done for thousands of years. It has even been successfully used in situations where modern scientific equipment failed. So why not do the same with bone?

  Some kooks even challenged us and Dr. Vass to take a Million Dollar Challenge and prove, once and for all, that divining for bodies using the ideomotor effect was a hoax. (The ideomotor effect is defined as involuntary movements caused by the mind. A good example of this would be the supposed movement of the pointer of a Ouija board by a person’s mind.) It is impossible to prove to some people that we went to the moon if they don’t want to believe it. The same is true for divining. If you have convinced yourself that you do not want to believe it, then it doesn’t matter what we say; you’ll never be convinced. Thus, we respectfully declined their challenge, told them to go bother someone else, and blocked them forever from our e-mail system.

  We, along with Bobby, Monkey, our divining rods, and the rest of the team, arrived at the entrance to Blackwater Creek Park, which is hundreds of acres of very wooded, very rural, very hilly, and very rocky terrain. Trying to find human remains—better yet, trying to find anything in this area—with only eight people is an unbelievably daunting task, to say the least. Where do you even start on a cold case, an almost twenty-year-old cold case no less, with virtually no leads?

  Back in 1989, a missing-person call had come in to the police department regarding a Lloyd Floyd Thomas, from Thomas’s estranged wife, Thelle. Thelle and Lloyd had been separated for about eight years, and although Thelle had not permanently lived at the residence in nearly a decade, she still came by on a regular basis to take care of Lloyd. She told investigators that when she arrived at Lloyd’s house on the day he went missing, the place was a mess, with furniture knocked over, a cigar burning in the ashtray, and Lloyd’s glasses sitting on the table. Funny thing was, Lloyd didn’t smoke, and he never went anywhere without his glasses. Even more mysterious, Lloyd’s medications had been left behind in the house as well. Lloyd, an African American man in his sixties, had a bad heart and had been susceptible to seizures ever since a motorcycle accident nearly thirty years earlier. He couldn’t afford to miss even a single dose of his medicine. Before investigators arrived, Thelle had unwisely decided to tidy up the house a bit and had cleaned up the crime scene, righting the table and chairs and other items that had been disturbed. Luckily, she remembered how things had been, and later returned the room to the disarray in which she had originally found it. Investigators took six photos and collected one bottle of brandy and another undetermined bottle of alcohol for fingerprints. That’s it. Pictures of a re-created crime scene and two bottles. That was all the physical evidence they had to go on. Twenty years ago, this was a pretty standard practice for crime scene investigation. And because there was no such thing as DNA testing at the time, no one bothered to collect and package the cigar. Back then, most leads were predicated on whatever information could be garnered from interviews or statements from key witnesses. And indeed, about a month into this investigation, a key witness came forward.

  Kevin Parsons, owner of the Save-Mor Furniture Store in Lynchburg, informed investigators about a story that one of his delivery employees, George Morton—Thelle Thomas’s boyfriend—had been telling about the missing Lloyd Thomas. Parsons told the investigators that Morton claimed not only that he had killed Lloyd, but that Thelle had been in on it too. George Morton was a habitual offender and a dangerous man with a long rap sheet. Parsons came to the police because Morton had physically attacked him over a supposed debt. He’d become so violent that Parsons had had to pepper-spray him in the face to get him off. He had supposedly threatened to kill Parsons if he said anything about Lloyd’s disappearance. Though Parsons wanted no one to know he had informed police about the incident, investigators discovered that he had been bragging about his working with the police to his friends. Police use and abuse snitches, and they know better than to ever trust one. Parsons’s obvious enjoyment of his role had made investigators leery of his being a truthful witness. Nonetheless, they brought in Thelle and questioned her about her relationship with Morton and her supposed involvement in the killing of Lloyd Floyd Thomas.

  The interrogation of Thelle didn’t bring a whole lot of new information to light. She told investigators that five days had passed before she reported Lloyd missing to the police, and that she’d been to the house each of those five days, cleaning up the disarray that she had originally found. She also admitted that Lloyd didn’t know that she was living with George—even though she’d been living with him from the very moment she’d left Lloyd eight years previously. The only piece of interesting information that came out of the interview was the fact that she had kept up a life insurance policy on Lloyd for years, even after she left him. An interesting bit of information, but nothing damning. Ultimately, the interrogation didn’t bring any useful information to light, and Parson’s story, though still believed by many, was not enough to make an arrest.

  Over the course of the days, weeks, and months that passed after Lloyd’s disappearance, several leads came in to the police department, none eventually going anywhere. They were all dead ends. People claimed to have seen Thomas everywhere—alive at his favorite “nip” joints, walking down the street, shacking up with some woman somewhere else in town, and even supposedly found dead by some kids behind an old hospital. The Lynchburg investigators ran down each and every one of the leads, interviewing people and searching the places where he was “last seen.” Thelle even told investigators a month after Lloyd disappeared that someone had tried to enter the house with a key, because one day she’d found a padlock opened, and she and Lloyd were purported to have the only two keys. But once again, nothing came of these leads, and with no new credible information, the case went cold.

  “Found him!” an elated Detective Moore yelled to all of us just off the bike path, near the mouth of the old train tunnel that defines the park, just seconds after beginning our search. Of course, he was being Bobby, and he had found nothing, though for a split second everyone thought he had. Serious Bobby made an appearance for a few moments to give us all a briefing on how we would conduct our search. “Tiny said they came down through the tunnel and made an immediate left,” Bobby informed the group. “Tiny” was the nickname of one of the retired investigators on the case. Back in 1991, two years after anything had been done on the case, a mysterious drunk had appeared in the back parking lot of the Lynchburg police station, screaming and crying “that he had killed Lloyd” and “couldn’t get his face out of his dreams.” He went on to explain to the now-growing number of officers who had gathered in the back of the police department that Lloyd Floyd Thomas’s body was in Blackwater Creek Park, just through the tunnel, buried at the base of a big tree right off a dirt trail near the old railroad tracks. Invest
igators immediately gathered up the old drunk and drove to Blackwater Creek Park, hoping to find Lloyd, but though they searched and searched the area back in 1991, they found nothing. Still, that was where we would begin our first search of the day.

  “A big tree” is not much of a lead, especially in a heavily wooded park. It’s even less of a lead seventeen years after someone goes missing. But armed with our meager amount of information, we began our descent down the hill to what was presumably the original path that the drunk had mentioned. Bobby went his own way, up a very steep hill, toward Lloyd’s old house. Only minutes into our investigation, many of the group began discussing what we would be having for lunch. Others poked fun at our brand of witchcraft as we sauntered through the woods armed with our divining rods, fashioned from coat hangers and tubing from yesterday’s dry cleaning. Part of the process for using the rods is having the opportunity to walk slowly and smoothly, feeling for the interruption in Earth’s magnetic field. But as we found out, that’s nearly impossible walking downhill through leaves and mud. We chose the largest trees in the vicinity to conduct our dowsing search, slowly, steadily. No Lloyd.

  John Romano, an investigator with the Lynchburg Police

  Department, trying our divining rods to search for bones.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  The group scattered about the hillside, kicking over a leaf here, a rotten tree stump there, overwhelmed by the prospect of looking all over the park for two-decades-old human remains. Boredom rolled in quickly, and as is customary with cops, with boredom came the joking. From Uncle Fester impressions to an uncanny rendition of Billy Bob Thornton’s character in the movie Sling Blade, the ribbing continued, laughs echoing throughout the tunnel. Then, all of a sudden, at the zenith of our goofing around, Bobby found a bone.

  Bobby Moore, of the Lynchburg Police Department,

  giving the team instructions on the search.

  HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC

  After the 1991 alcohol-induced rant about the whereabouts of Lloyd Thomas, the case went dormant again for four more years. That is, until a skull found its way to the middle of the park entrance. Some bicyclists discovered the skull as they rode through the park toward the tunnel, on the opposite side from where investigators had searched back in 1991.

  Cadaver dogs were brought in to the area to sniff out other possible places where human remains might lie dormant. The use of cadaver dogs is a curious undertaking. Some people swear by them; others, not so much. Trainers from across the country bring their dogs to the Body Farm in Knoxville to train. But every dog, be it a trained cadaver dog or your pet Rover, can smell evidence of human remains at the Body Farm—that’s no test. Dr. Vass once did some informal research on a few dogs who could supposedly detect human bones buried deep within the earth. The results were mixed, to say the least. Part of the reason cadaver dogs have fallen out of favor is because of one renowned handler named Sandra Anderson, who pleaded guilty to five felony charges, including falsifying and concealing material facts from law enforcement officials, obstruction of justice, and lying to law enforcement officials. In other words, she would plant bones and other evidence stained with her own blood for her dog to find at crime scenes where police were searching for missing individuals who were presumed to be in the area. It was a horrible thing to do, and she was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison and ordered to pay $14,500 in restitution to several law enforcement agencies.

  Though no other remains were found back then, the dogs had hit on a couple of “areas of interest”—places where decomposing remains might be or might have been. This was the area where we found ourselves, up on a ridgetop.

  “Found him,” Bobby again yelled, his voice echoing through the ravine. Indeed, he had really found a bone, one as green as a gourd. Alas, there was no doubt that the bone was animal, probably from a piece of meat bought at the grocery store. “Butcher marks,” Bobby said as we looked at the bone. “Probably just junk from somebody’s old campsite.” We were no closer to finding Lloyd Floyd Thomas—that is, unless Lloyd was a rump roast from the local grocer.

  The skull that had been found back in 1995 was sent to the National Museum of Natural History, part of the illustrious Smithsonian Institution, for examination by Dr. Doug Owsley. Dr. Owsley is one of the dozens of Dr. Bill Bass’s prize pupils who dot the country, analyzing human remains. Though the exact numbers are not known, Dr. Bass is credited with being responsible for having taught at least half of all forensic anthropologists working throughout the world today. This incredible group forms the unique nexus between the new, modern-day forensic anthropologist and the scientifically trained crime scene investigator. Their impact can be felt all across the country. From the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Dr. Bass’s students continue to make an impact everywhere in helping to solve the mysteries left behind from human remains.

  Dr. Owsley, whose work encompasses a wide range of interesting cases including the analysis of human remains from the first American settlement in Jamestown and the macabre and butchered bones left behind by Jeffrey Dahmer, received the skull from Lynchburg investigators in April 1995. In his report back to the investigators, Dr. Owsley concluded that the partial skull was from an African American male, at least fifty years old but probably older. This determination was acquired through statistical comparisons with other known specimens, which, over time, have been able to provide enough information to generate a database of measurements against which to compare samples. However, the skull found in Virginia was missing significant portions, particularly the mandible and the mandibular teeth. Unfortunately, without more bones, Dr. Owsley’s ultimate analysis was inconclusive, and the report stated that a positive identification was impossible.

  In spite of this, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, using photographs of Lloyd Floyd Thomas, created a computer-aided superimposition of the skull and the photographs. Dr. Owsley determined that the general shape of the cranium was “a good match,” making several observations of similarity, including upper facial height, eye sockets, brow ridges, and what was said to be one of the most striking comparisons, the “moderately prominent glabella and depressed nasal root” (in layman’s terms, the space between the eyebrows and the distance from the cheek-bones to the nose). The final analysis of all of the compiled data: a high probability that the skull was Lloyd Floyd Thomas’s.

  Though the Smithsonian’s analysis was interesting, it ultimately provided little boost to the investigation, and again the case went cold. The investigators who had first looked for Lloyd Floyd Thomas began to retire, passing their old relics of cases gone by to a younger generation of eager investigators. One of these new investigators was John Pelletier. In 2003, Investigator Pelletier took what remained of the case and began to organize it methodically to see what evidence remained in the inventory, what case notes still existed, what interview notes remained, and so on. Cold cases are not like wine—most do not improve with age. Pelletier didn’t have a lot to go on. A few eight-by-ten photographs, some case files (others were missing), a brandy bottle, two latent prints lifted from that bottle—essentially the same pathetic evidence from fifteen years earlier, plus the skull and teeth, which were still at the Smithsonian.

  But by 2003, new advances in forensic technology and capabilities had emerged, particularly the evolution of DNA analysis that could help the Lynchburg investigators garner new information. Pelletier decided to send the latent lifts, some of the teeth, and the skull to a forensic laboratory in Roanoke, Virginia, for DNA analysis of the evidence. Analysis of DNA evidence, particularly from a cold case, has become a crap-shoot, to say the least. The serious backlog that is crippling our country’s crime labs is reaching near-catastrophic proportions. It is similar to the last scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which the Ark of the Covenant is stored in an unimaginably large and very full warehouse for “later” analysis. We’ve seen container after containe
r of DNA simply sitting on refrigerator shelves all across the country, awaiting analysis—some even in household refrigerators, in jars with sticky circular rings left on the bottom from months and years of condensation. By the time the analysts have time to get around to it, be it weeks, months, years, or even decades later, in some tragic cases, the evidence may be misplaced or lost or destroyed or simply no longer cared about. In this case, the Lynchburg investigators even struggled to get comparison swabs from Lloyd Thomas’s living siblings. Some people are just suspicious of being called out of the blue to submit to having a giant cotton swab crammed into their mouths, collecting epithelial cells for a later comparison to a brother who has been gone for more than fifteen years—a brother whom they weren’t even that close to in the first place. However, Lloyd’s brother did eventually give a buccal swab for comparison to the skull’s DNA.

  Investigator Pelletier was persistent and thorough in his endeavor to resolve some part of the case, even if it was only to verify conclusively that the skull indeed belonged to Lloyd Floyd Thomas. And by persistent, we mean he bugged the hell out of the DNA scientists at the Virginia lab. In 2006, eighteen months after Pelletier had sent the items to be examined (the skull, the teeth, the brandy bottle, the latent lifts off the bottle, and the buccal swab from Lloyd’s brother), the scientists finally analyzed the evidence. They isolated DNA from a tooth from the skull as well as from the fingerprints off the brandy bottle. But it was a weak profile. They also analyzed the buccal swab from Lloyd’s brother, and though the samples from the tooth and from the brother had similarities, they were common across many people and had too few similarities to draw any conclusions. This was particularly true in 2004 when the evidence was sent. The only hope now was to do a mitochondrial DNA comparison.