Theodore Long and Robert Sands.Photo: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost/Facebook
According toCBS News,Alisa Yelkin said she was taking a forensic anthropology class at Youngstown State University in the early 2000s when she saw a box of bones belonging to an unknown individual or individuals.
“I wondered forever who he was. I wondered what he looked like, and he haunted me,” Yelkin said during a press conference Tuesday.
She said it didn’t take her 20 years to contact police — but it took police that long to hear her out.
“I called and I called, and I stopped different police officers, and nobody took me seriously,” Yelkin said.
She never forgot the box of remains, and her persistence paid off when she contacted Youngstown police again, about a year and a half ago, after reading an online article about local cold cases.
Yelkin got in contact with Det. Dave Sweeney with the YPD, and she says the conversation catapulted the investigation into who the remains belonged to.
DNA technology, 3D facial reconstruction, and tips from the public helped police identify two sets of remains of men who had gone missing nearly 200 miles apart in Ohio in the late 1970s and early ’80s, according to a press release.
On Monday, police announced Theodore “Teddy” Long of Fayette County, Ohio, and Robert Sanders of Mahoning County, Ohio, as the unidentified individuals.
Over a decade later, in September 1987, a grandfather and grandson out hunting came across a skull and bones near a cemetery in Youngstown. The bones were taken to anthropologists at the university, but never identified — until Yelkin’s phone call to police in 2021 jumpstarted the case, said police.
Through forensic facial reconstruction, a clay model was produced, and the image was circulated on social media and local news.
Genetic genealogy eventually helped identify Sanders, whose partial remains were found near the cemetery, the release reads.
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Tips continued to pour in, including one that would help identify separate partial remains found in a creek in 1981.
“The tip proved to be the missing piece that led to the identification of Theodore Long,” the release reads.
Police are still working to figure out how Sanders died.
Anyone with information on his case is encouraged to contact the Youngstown Police Department at (330) 742-8900.
Anyone with information in the investigation regarding Long is encouraged to contact the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office at (740) 335-6170.
source: people.com
