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Manistee County, Michigan (AP) — Human remains found along the shoreline of Lake Michigan in western Michigan in 1997 belonged to a Chicago woman sighted weeks earlier in a beachside park in Wisconsin. have been identified, police said Monday.
Forensic experts based on advanced DNA analysis confirmed in December that the remains belonged to Dorothy Lynn (Sing) Ricker, according to the Michigan State Police.
“A DNA test was not possible when Dorothy Ricker died, but investigators today are grateful to have brought some resolution to her family,” police said in a news release.
The then 26-year-old Ricker was last seen on October 2, 1997, when he was seen by St. Francis Police Department officers sitting on a bench in a lakeside park in Wisconsin. She told officers, “She’s from Chicago and she was ‘enjoying the lakeside and the sun,'” state police said.
The next day, an abandoned vehicle was found nearby whose license plate was found to belong to a person listed as “Missing/Endangered” by the Chicago Police Department. State police said the information was not known at the time officers spoke with Ricker.
On October 27, 1997, human remains were found along a lake in Manistee County in western Michigan. A forensic autopsy determined he died of asphyxiation due to drowning, but his identity could not be determined.
The remains were exhumed in 2020 and bone samples were sent to Astrea Forensics under the DNA Doe project for forensic genetic genealogy, state police said. The following year, police informed of a possible genetic connection to the Sing family, who hails from Acton, Maine.
According to police, a DNA sample was obtained from what may have been Ricker’s brother, who lived in Chicago, and what could also be Ricker’s daughter.
Ricker’s severely degraded bone sample was unsuitable for “conventional examination,” so it was sent to Intermountain Forensics in Salt Lake City, Utah for advanced analysis, where it was eventually confirmed to be Ricker’s. I was.
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