Remains from Brazoria County sent for analysis to Fort Worth lab

Skeletal remains found in Brazoria County in recent days, which may be those of a University of North Texas student missing since 1997, will be analyzed by UNT Health Science Center’s missing persons lab in Fort Worth, an official said Wednesday.

“I don’t know when that process will start,” Jeff Carlton, a spokesman for the center, said in a Wednesday email. “We will do what we can to assist in the identification.”

The remains were located a few days ago in a pasture off Texas 288 near Rosharon by authorities who were led to the site by convicted kidnapper William Reece.

Reece has told authorities that the property was where he buried Kelli Cox, who disappeared in July 1997 in Denton, Jan Bynum, Cox’s mother, has told the Star-Telegram.

Reece is serving 60 years for a kidnapping in Harris County.

Last month, he guided authorities to a pasture in southeast Houston where other human remains were found. Those remains are thought to be that of another missing person, 17-year-old Jessica Cain of La Marque.

UNT Health Science Center officials declined to comment on any details of the remains found in Brazoria County.

Typically, the missing persons lab receives skeletal remains or teeth from law enforcement agencies, medical examiners or coroners for identification. The DNA extraction process includes thorough cleaning of the remains, grounding the samplings into powder and numerous tests.

“The processing of bones for DNA is not an overnight procedure,” Carlton said. “Everything undergoes more than one review process to ensure the proper procedures were followed and that two separate analysts agree on the results.”

Carlton noted that if no results are obtained or only a partial profile is accomplished, the remains are processed several more times to obtain results.

“Having family-reference samples to compare to the remains is just as important,” Calrton said. “You have to have both sides of the puzzle in order to determine identity.”

Cox’s case is 18 years old, but the missing persons lab has handled older remains.

In 2014, the Fort Worth center made positive identification in a 73-year-old case from remains found at a Florida reform school.

The Health Science Center is one of only a few public-sector laboratories that specialize in the analysis of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from skeletal remains. This DNA is more resistant to degradation than is nuclear DNA, which is routinely analyzed in forensic cases.

The health science center also has the nation’s only lab at an academic center that is approved to upload genetic data for unidentified remains to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. The lab has been crucial in helping identify victims of well-known crimes and natural disasters.

Workers identified a victim of Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy and worked on cases involving Gary Ridgway, a Seattle-area murderer known as the Green River Killer. The center has also helped identify victims of 9-11, Hurricane Katrina and the 1973 Pinochet military coup in Chile.

This report includes material from The Associated Press and Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Remains from Brazoria County sent for analysis to Fort Worth lab."