(Copyright 2008
Bangor Daily News)
EAST MILLINOCKET - State
police already have the
best forensic evidence
they are likely to get
from the body of
homicide victim Joyce
McLain, State Deputy
Attorney General William
R. Stokes said Tuesday.
Gently rebutting claims
made by McLain's mother,
Pamela McLain, that
exhuming her daughter's
body might shed new
light on her killer,
Stokes said that samples
taken from the body
during the autopsy
almost 28 years ago shed
no light on suspects,
but remain in storage in
case new technology or
evidence develops.
"My heart does go out to
Mrs. McLain. This is a
case we would dearly
love to solve, but my
reason for declining to
exhume the body is that
we really would not be
able to say that that's
the best evidence that
we have," Stokes said
Tuesday. "The best
evidence is what we took
at the time."
Of
10 items processed from
the body, three were
identifiable only as
female DNA - presumably
Joyce McLain's, Stokes
said. He declined to
comment further.
"We can say with a fair
degree of certainty is
the likelihood of
finding anything new is
virtually nonexistent,"
he added, "and we would
have no way of linking
it to anything."
A
16-year-old Schenck High
School sophomore, McLain
went jogging the night
of Aug. 8, 1980. Her
partially clad body was
found two days later in
a power line clearing
about 200 feet from the
school's soccer fields.
Her head and neck had
been struck repeatedly
with a blunt object.
When Pamela McLain asked
the state medical
examiner's office late
last year to exhume the
body, she hoped that the
killer might have left
DNA traces in the wounds
that could help with the
state police
investigation, which
continues. She also
believes there is at
least a chance the body
has not degraded to the
extent the experts
believe.
Tuesday, McLain said her
position is unchanged.
"I
am not judging them on
what they have done.
What I am saying is, why
not go one step further
because of today's
technology? Test her
inside and out today,
now," McLain said
Tuesday. "I want the
insides of her tested."
Stokes repeated his
original explanation to
McLain, written in a
letter dated March 3,
that the Maine State
Police Crime Laboratory
and the state's chief
medical examiner both
describe exhumation as
an almost certainly
fruitless endeavor.
They believe that after
almost 28 years, the
body would be so
degraded, and DNA
evidence so inherently
fragile, that evidence
would be virtually
impossible to find.
Further, Stokes said, it
would be at the very
least daunting to prove
in court that any
evidence recovered now
would have been placed
there by the killer. The
body left the chain of
evidence, which is
designed to limit
outside contamination,
when it was returned to
the family for burial.
"Suppose you got a DNA
profile that was not
hers? Is it the
undertaker's? Somebody
who prepared or dressed
the body? How could you
tell that this DNA was
connected to the crime?
This case had its
problems," Stokes said.
"It was an outdoor
[crime] scene, so number
one, it was contaminated
by inclement weather
[rain]. You always have
a problem with that.
"On the other hand, they
did take samples from
the body and clothing,"
Stokes added. "All of
that was done and fairly
extensive testing was
done on it."
McLain, who has been
critical of
investigative efforts
and relentless about
solving her daughter's
case, still wants the
body exhumed. She is
working on getting Dr.
Michael Baden, the chief
forensic pathologist for
the New York State
Police, to take on the
case.
But she still hopes
state police will change
their minds.
"They don't have
anything to lose,"
McLain said. "They know
that when they do this
[exhumation], this will
quiet me down on this
because this boulder has
been turned over.
Whatever the results -
at least we will know
that this avenue is
gone.
"They are not hearing me
say that. They are
choosing to overlook
what I am saying," she
added.
"I
deal with homicide
victims every day ...
they are frustrated.
They want it solved. I
can't really tell them
not to feel that way,"
Stokes said. "That's
something that goes with
the frustration they
feel and we respect
that."
Only twice since 2001
have state police
exhumed a body and once,
in a death that occurred
in 1989, were they
searching for DNA
evidence, Stokes said.
Neither search was
helpful.
"It was complete mess,"
he said of the DNA
search. "It was just
useless. You could not
have determined anything
from what we found."
The McLain case remains
under active
investigation, Stokes
said. He invited anyone
with information about
it to contact state
police investigators at
941-4071.
