Pollen Offers New Clue in 1979 Slaying

Oct. 4, 2006 — Three grains of pollen might help solve a 27-year-old murder mystery.

To try to unmask the identity of a teenage girl found slain in a cornfield in western New York in 1979, investigators have turned to a pollen-analysis technique rarely used in the United States in hopes of pinpointing where she once lived.

A forensic botanist in Texas determined that three microscopic pollen grains from an Australian pine that were recovered this summer inside the girl's red jacket and her pants pocket could have come only from Florida, Arizona or most likely southern California, provided she didn't leave the country.

"The chances of one of those pollen grains reaching that area of New York on air currents might be, I don't know, a billion to one," said Professor Vaughn Bryant, director of the Palynology Laboratory at Texas A&M University. "But three of them, unh-unh, I'm sorry, it's not possible."

Based on an assortment of about 40 other pollen types that were also found, the girl seems to have resided in or at least traveled through coastal regions in southern California such as San Diego, Bryant said, adding that "with more effort, it's possible we could narrow this down further."

The girl, believed to be about 15 years old, was shot beside a country road in Caledonia the night of Nov. 8, 1979, then dragged into the field and shot again, police said. The next morning, a farmer spotted her brightly colored jacket and walked over, thinking a hunter was trespassing.

John York, the first police officer on the scene, has since combed through more than 10,000 leads, interviewed two notorious serial killers who claimed responsibility, saturated the South and Southwest with thousands of fliers and got the case profiled repeatedly on "America's Most Wanted."

"It was not only a very difficult case, especially when a child's that young, but it's become personally quite difficult. We don't have many open homicides here," said York, who's been sheriff of largely rural Livingston County since 1989.

"I think every homicide investigator will tell you the same thing: You go to the scene, conduct the investigation and it's only a matter of just a short time before you can identify the victim and, in turn, it will take you to a perpetrator; 27 years later, we're still trying to do that."

Forensic palynology is used regularly as evidence in criminal trials in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and has helped unlock wartime mass-murder riddles in Bosnia and Hungary. But it's been tried fewer than a dozen times in U.S. crimes, said Bryant, one of only two such specialists in the country.

The idea for applying the method came from Paul Chambers, an investigator at the medical examiner's office in Rochester who studied forensic archaeology during his years as a police constable in England. "The reason it's not used more often in this country is it's just not well-known," Chambers said.

"It's just like DNA, blood analysis, mineral studies, a tool that in some cases has proven extremely useful," Bryant said. "I've been beating the drum since 1975 trying to get people interested but most of it fell on deaf ears until 9/11. This is just one of many new techniques the federal government has become interested in to try to prevent terrorism."