On the Trail of the Body Hunters The Police Were Sure They Knew the Killer but There Could Be No Murder Case Without a Body, and No Peace for the Family of Missing Michele Wallace. That’s Where a Group of Pioneering Volunteers Came In. By Rebecca McQuilla

By Rebecca McQuillan

THE Rocky Mountains, Colorado, August 30, 1974. Michele Wallace, 25, a promising photographer, is returning from a short backpacking trip in rugged, isolated Gunnison county, accompanied by her German shepherd, Okee.

When she reaches the road there is a battered car there with two men – Chuck Matthews, a local farm hand, and a drifter called Roy Melanson – inside, drinking beer.

The two met in a bar the night before. They offer to drive Michele to her red Mazda, a kilometre away, and she accepts. By the time they get there, though, Matthews’s car has broken down, so Michele drives them into town.

Matthews gets out at a bar and thanks Michele, but Melanson asks her to take him further on to his own car. Matthews watches, frowning, as they drive off: he knows Melanson does not have a car.

A week later, Matthews catches a radio report about a missing 25- year-old woman. He realises with a jolt that it must be the girl he met. He calls the police. When they track down Melanson he is 300km away. He has Michele’s driving licence, camping equipment and car keys, and pawn tickets for her sleeping bag and camera. Her car is found nearby.

The police strongly suspect he has killed Michele but, without a body, they will struggle to prove it. A jury might not even believe Michele is dead. The “double jeopardy” clause dictates no-one can be tried for the same crime twice, even if Michele’s body were subsequently found.

At Michele’s home in Chicago, the lives of her parents, George and Maggie, and her brother, George Jr, have been devastated. One morning, five weeks after Michele’s disappearance, George wakes to find Maggie dead beside him; she has overdosed on barbiturates. A note on the kitchen table says simply she is going to heaven with Michele.

And still nothing. A massive search involving 400 volunteers covering 1300 square miles, yields no sign of Michele. Okee is dead after apparently being shot by a rancher for worrying his livestock days after Michele disappeared.

Then, in July 1979, just off a logging road in Gunnison, a young hiker finds part of a scalp with dark, plaited brown hair attached, just like Michele’s. But it’s not enough to try Melanson, who has since been convicted of an unrelated rape.

Twelve more years pass until Kathy Young, a Colorado investigator, resumes the inquiry. She calls in a new group called Necrosearch, a Colorado-based not-for-profit organisation specialising in uncovering clandestine grave sites. It comprises highly skilled volunteers, including geophysicists, ecologists, insect specialists and forensic anthropologists.

To narrow the search area, Necrosearch botanist Vicky Trammell examines the braids of hair.

It is sun-bleached in one place, suggesting Michele’s body was dumped, not buried, and contains lots of matter from subalpine firs, which favour cooler, damper, north-facing slopes. Trammell suggests that’s where they should start looking.

On the second day of the search, August 6, 1992, animal tracker Cecilia Travis is heading down a slope when something catches her eye. There are large white mushrooms everywhere and one looks a bit like a skull. She decides to remove it in case it misleads someone. As she gets closer, however, she realises it isn’t a mushroom.

“This is a heavily wooded area and a ray of light came through and hit that cranium and it had a gold molar on the mandible, ” says Travis.

“I knew I had Michele. “To myself, I said, ‘it’s all right, Michele, we know now’.”

In total, 40 bones were recovered, including 25 foot bones in a boot.

Dental records confirmed it was Michele. In 1993, Roy Melanson was found guilty of first degree murder and jailed for life.

Michele’s story is told in a television documentary tonight. The team has covered 235 cases, mainly in Colorado, and use buried pig carcasses to train others in detecting small environmental changes caused by decomposing bodies.

So could the same approach work in the UK?

AROUND 210,000 PEOPLE GO missing in Britain every year. Most are found safe and well within 72 hours: abduction, according to the National Missing Persons Helpline, is by far the least likely scenario.

But in some cases strong suspicions of foul play do surround a disappearance and profilers can help narrow down the likely areas.

However, Professor Sue Black, professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology at Dundee University and one of the UK’s leading forensic specialists, is doubtful a Necrosearch-style team would be of benefit here. She says: “Britain is a little country and we don’t have the same murder rate as the US.” Such a team would get called out a only few times a year.

Besides, the UK already has a network of experts who can be called in quickly. A database of “ologists” is kept by Centrex, the police training and development authority.

Police search advisers (Polsas) and the national forensic search advisory group help put police in touch with the relevant ones. Quality assurance is provided by the council for the registration of forensic practitioners, established in 2001.

Their expertise assists not only in finding hidden bodies but, once found, establishing their identity and how they died. In the past 10 years, entomology (the analysis of flesheating insects) and palenology (environmental profiling) have gained “enormous momentum”.

By analysing pollen collected from nasal passages, say, or fragments of plants on clothes, a palenologist can tell how long a body has lain somewhere, whether it has been moved and, if so, when.

“If you go back 20 years, much of forensics was done either by the police or by the pathologist, ” says Black. “As techniques have become more sensitive, these general practitioners can do less. Every area has to be handed over to a specialist.”

This only increases the importance of preserving the crime scene undisturbed. More police training is being devoted to this, leading to the emergence of crime-scene managers to protect sensitive evidence. For the public, too, the message is: if you uncover a crime scene, leave it alone and call the police.

Forensic technology must continue to improve, however, to stay one step ahead of criminals. “Our problem is that we’re so pleased when we get things right, we speak to journalists and go on television, ” says Black. “The criminal is not a fool and will find a way to beat us the next time. We have to keep improving our techniques.”

By doing so, they make it possible to bring peace to families who have lived, sometimes for years, in a twilight world of uncertainty.

The Body Hunters: Necrosearch, National Geographic Channel, tonight, 10pm.

How do they do it?

Geophysicists use equipment such as ground-penetrating radar to “see” underground and find signs that soil has been disturbed even if a grave is overgrown or covered in concrete.

Palenologists use a specialised knowledge of botany and ecology to tell if ground has been disturbed (by the patterns of plant growth) or where and when a person was killed (by analysing pollen, which has specific signatures from plant to plant).

Forensic entomologists can establish key facts from insects. The blow fly, for instance, often the first organism to inhabit a dead body, goes through developmental stages of set duration, allowing for accurate estimates of time of death.

Forensic anthropologists can establish sex, age, height, ethnic background and other traits that might narrow down possible matches on the missing persons database.

“Cadaver dogs” are trained to track dead bodies. American researchers this week said wasps could do the same: wasps contained in a portable PVC tube were trained using food-association to crowd round the ventilation hole in response to certain smells.

Animal trackers and zoologists are useful in countries where there are large predators like mountain lions, bears and coyotes. Predators dispose of cadavers in a set sequence, starting with fat and muscles, moving on to upper then lower limbs, so the state of remains indicates roughly how long they’ve been there. In Britain, zoologists can help identify marks on bones caused by rats, dogs or cats.