About 4-5 years ago, I remember reading a news story about this 17 or 18 year old boy who had been murdered - shot in the head - by a classmate in the winter of 1978. When they found his body the next April, it had obviously decomposed and the remains were sent to a medical examiner for the standard autopsy/criminal investigation. The body was buried and that was that...or so they thought.
Thirty-plus years later, a skull was found in the garage of a retired medical examiner who had passed away, along with 2 other skulls. The skulls were numbered, and they were able to trace them. It was discovered that one of the skulls was of the boy who had died in 1978. So authorities contacted the family and told them of the discovery, which of course devastated and horrified them. They never dreamed their loved one wasn't buried completely intact, missing what is obviously a very important part of his body. They ended up exhuming the boy's body and re-burying it, this time with his skull.
Afterwards, it was determined that what probably happened was that the medical examiner removed the skull during the autopsy and kept it - without permission from the family - because it made a good teaching tool the way the bullet hole had pierced it. Then the remains were sealed in a casket, and of course no one after that point thought there was any reason to look at the remains. A funeral director was quoted in the news story as saying that back in the day, this type of body-part removal was not uncommon at all. After all, who would really know? And who would really care (or so they thought). The same funeral director was quoted as saying that these days something like that wouldn't happen without permission from the family, because there was more awareness and understanding of the grief process, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if maybe something like this had happened in this case. After all, no one probably ever expected that the body would later be exhumed, so who would know? Very unfortunate. I feel for the family.
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