DNA matches skull found in Illinois house to Indiana teen who died in 1866 : NPR

In November 1978, a man in Batavia, Ill., was renovating his house when he knocked down a wall to reveal what appeared to be a human skull lying between the studs.

Almost half a century later — thanks to community fundraising, sophisticated DNA testing and a cooperative descendent — the identity of that skull has finally been confirmed.

It belonged to an Indiana teenager who died from childbirth complications in 1866.

“We now know the skull found in the wall in Batavia as Esther Granger,” Kane County Coroner Rob Russell announced at a press conference on Thursday, surrounded by county officials and standing beside a replica of the skull in a glass box.

Granger was born in October 1848 in Indiana, and married her husband Charles in 1865 at the age of 16, authorities say. She died the following year shortly after giving birth to her first child, a girl.

Public records show that Granger was buried in Merrillville, Ind. — about 80 miles away from the Chicago suburb where her skull was found over a century later.

“So the question remains: If she died in 1866 in Indiana, how did she end up in a wall in a house in Batavia?” said Russell.

Investigators believe Granger was a victim of grave robbing, which was both common and profitable at the time. Perpetrators could make three to four months’ worth of earnings off a single body — often selling them to medical schools for anatomy study — and were rarely apprehended by law enforcement, Russell said.

The working theory is that somebody who lived in the Batavia home obtained the cadaver (or parts of it) for medical study and, knowing the ramifications, later hid it away in the wall.

“There is no absolute answer to how Esther ended up in that wall or where the rest of her body’s located, but being a victim of grave robbing does fit the bill,” Russell said.

The house where the skull was found is located “right smack-dab in the oldest part of Batavia,” Mayor Jeffrey Schielke said, and dates back to the 1850s.

“Thank you for helping us solve a mystery, that we didn’t have a murderer that we didn’t know about,” the mayor told the coroner with a laugh.

Technology, time and money helped solve a decades-old mystery

The homeowner called Batavia police immediately after discovering the skull in 1978, Russell explained, but their investigation was limited by the lack of DNA technology and genealogical records at the time.

The most they could surmise was that the skull was likely that of a young woman who had died around the age of 20 sometime before 1900.

Over time, the case grew cold — and the skull somehow ended up at the Batavia Depot Museum, a local history museum located inside a former train station. Batavia Police Chief Shawn Mazza said records show the skull was in the museum by 1979, but there is no information about how or why it got there.

Museum employees were cleaning up inventory in March 2021 when they found the skull in a box. They called the police, who found the 1978 report and sent the skull to the cold case unit of the coroner’s office for further investigation.

After two years of “reviewing existing evidence and chasing down leads,” Russell said, the office learned of a Texas company called Othram, which uses a relatively new technique called forensic investigative genetic genealogy to help solve cold cases.

Othram scientists examined the skull and obtained testable DNA. If Othram could obtain a profile, it would run it through their database to look for possible family members, the company said, advising officials that they could try to cover the cost through crowdfunding.

Russell’s office appealed to the public for donations in December 2023, and ultimately raised about $7,500. Within weeks, Othram found that the profile had yielded a match.

The company says Granger’s is the oldest unidentified human remains case it has worked on to date, and one of the oldest individuals to be identified using forensic genetic genealogy.

“Not only did they have a match, but also a family tree with living relatives,” Russell said.

Investigators got in touch with that relative, 69-year-old Wayne Svilar, whose DNA confirmed that he is indeed Granger’s great-great grandson.

Svilar, a retired police sergeant with the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon, worked with its cold case squad in the early 2000s. Appearing at the press conference via Zoom, he said he initially thought the calls were a scam, and his wife assumed they were related to his prior cases.

“To be completely honest, we didn’t believe a word of it,” he said. “It took two or three phone calls to convince me.”

Granger’s family was able to get closure and lay her to rest

Svilar says what convinced him that “this was not some well-organized scam” was the authorities’ passion for and commitment to their work.

“The respect they’ve shown us, my family, in this process has been incredible,” he said.

Svilar said he didn’t grow up hearing anything about Granger, though wishes he had talked to his grandparents more. He said that side of the family ended up settling in Nebraska, and “the only thing that they ever talked about … was that life was really hard.”

After Granger was identified, authorities developed a composite sketch depicting what she likely looked like during her life. Svilar said he sees some similarities between that image and pictures of his mother.

“I wish my mom was still here so I could tell her this story — she’d love it,” he said. “I do feel like the sense of closure and the respect that we’ve shown Esther in this process has given me a lot of satisfaction.”

With her family’s approval, Granger was laid to rest in a cemetery in Batavia. Svilar gave a eulogy, and told reporters this week that even though that was his first time in Batavia, he felt like he had been there before.

In a full circle moment, Svilar added that he recently came out of retirement to take a job with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, where part of his responsibilities will be working with cold cases.

Russell said Granger’s remains are stored in a columbarium space paid for by the city, and labeled with a plaque.

“She is forever now a Batavia resident — actually a resident of heaven, probably — but at least physically a resident of Batavia,” he said. “And we thought that was appropriate since she spent so much time here.”