Law enforcement officials investigate the discovery of human remains found near Girl Scout Camp Manitou in the Manitowoc County town of Two Rivers Sept. 9, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — It’s been more than three days since a deer hunter found what the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office is calling human skeletal remains while on private property. Authorities are investigating whether they could be the remains of 3-year-old Elijah Vue, who has been missing from Two Rivers since February.
“That means there’s probably not much biological material there,” Joe LeFevre, a forensic science instructor at Fox Valley Technical College, said.
While LeFevre is not directly involved in the Manitowoc County case, he understands what investigators are dealing with.
“It’s mostly just the skeleton, there could be some flesh, maybe some organ material there, but I imagine scavengers, animals, bugs have probably done their duty on the body,” he said.
According to LeFevre, decomposition of a body can happen quickly, depending on the time of year.
“In the heat and humidity of our summer, we could see someone go to skeleton in just a matter of a couple of weeks,” he said. “In a colder climate if the body were to be placed in the fall … especially when we have the body freeze you could have somebody go to more of a mummified condition than a skeleton condition and then decomposition will take years.”
While LeFevre says a forensic anthropologist can just look at remains and determine if they’ve been out in the elements for a longer period of time as opposed to more recently, he say extracting a DNA profile will take some time, especially if there isn’t any good tissue remaining.
“When it’s bones, it’s a lot harder. There is DNA in bones, years ago we used to say there wasn’t, but more recent years we’ve found it,” he said. “There’s a process of grinding the bone and creating a slurry out of it and then being able to extract DNA from that, a very specialized process that we have to use out-of-state labs here in Wisconsin for.”
Investigators are at the mercy of the labs and their caseload for that process.
But once they have a DNA profile, finding a match could happen quickly.
“I’ve seen matches come back in 15, 20 minutes if the person is in the database or better yet if we’re looking at the fact we are doing a one-to-one comparison,” LeFevre said.
Investigators have said this will be a lengthy process. LeFevre agrees and says it could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to get answers.
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