Detective's obsession with murder case leads to remote Mexican village
By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, November 19, 2006 12:37 AM PST
MAMMOTH LAKES, -- At first, all Sgt. Paul Dostie had were handfuls of bones -- fragile, gnawed-on human bones.There was very little he could tell from the animal-ravaged remains found in a shallow grave in the Inyo National Forest in May 2003. Dostie only knew the victim was a petite woman who wasn't dressed for the rugged Sierra Nevada, judging by her size 5 shoes, lacy blouse and flimsy jacket.It appeared to be the third murder this ski resort town had seen in a quarter-century. But bones don't talk, and the 20-year police veteran realized that cracking this case would take more than old-fashioned detective work.Over the next 3 1/2 years, Dostie would comb the Internet for experts -- anthropologists, geneticists, linguists -- who would help him extract information from the remains. Won over by Dostie's dedication and aw-shucks good nature, they contributed their expertise, often for free.From the reports that trickled in, thick with jargon and footnoted references, Dostie slowly compiled intimate details of the victim's life story: where she was from, what she ate as a child, what she looked like, where she spent her last few months -- everything but her name.The search consumed him. He worked on it on days off; he spent hours scouring scientific papers and attending conferences of forensic experts in search of new technologies."I probably know more about her and how she lived and died than anyone else out there," he said.Dostie now believes he's weeks away from confirming the victim's identity. Only then will he be able to start the investigation he's waited years to pursue: the search for her killer.It began with a hiker walking his dog along the national forest's pine-edged trails. Something in the bushes grabbed the dog's interest.Curious, the hiker approached. It was a human skull defaced by scavenging animals.Police searched for other remains among the low-lying trails, but found nothing. A few days later, a hunch led a sheriff's deputy to clamber up a nearby hill -- a steep, dusty hummock with a view of Mammoth Lakes' main street.There, beneath the pines, Dostie was introduced to the victim who would come to define his career. Her cheap watch was still ticking, though it had spent the winter under snow. The skull had probably rolled downhill.The case got off to a good start: A week after police announced their find, an employee of the Mammoth Lakes Visitor Center came forward, saying she remembered a small woman who'd come in the previous fall. She had prominent cheekbones and straight black hair flowing past her shoulders.While her male companion was getting camping information, the woman took the employee aside and in her accented English said she was afraid of him -- a heavyset white man with a mustache and an abrasive manner.The employee handed the visitor a card from a local women's shelter, and the couple left.The medical examiner had said the victim might be Asian, but Dostie couldn't be sure it was the same person. Still, it was the only clue he had, and he pursued it.He asked about the couple at local hotels and campgrounds, distributed fliers with the woman's description, and placed ads in Asian-language newspapers as far away as Los Angeles."To me, if it's a homicide, you pull all the stops," he said.But it was a dead end. A year later, he was still empty-handed.Dostie was casting about for new ideas when he heard about DNAPrint Genomics, a Florida company that seemed to offer something new.DNA technology is typically used in criminal cases to match two samples -- connecting a suspect to evidence from a crime scene, for example. Instead of comparing two specimens, DNAPrint searches one person's DNA for clues about their racial makeup.Dostie decided to give it a try. Maybe he'd been looking for the wrong person.In May 2004, the detective sent the company a piece of skin. But it was tough and leathery after a rough winter at high altitude and couldn't be tested. So he sent a bone sample."It was striking," said Matt Thomas, the company's senior scientist. "It was 100 percent Native American. I don't see that many samples that are that clearly Native American."The finding still left a range of possibilities -- native peoples with similar genetic markers are found throughout the Americas, Thomas said. But it gave Dostie something to work with after so many discouraging months.He contacted a local band of Northern Paiutes and collected about 20 DNA samples from them. But no one had heard of the missing woman, and there were no genetic matches.He was also chasing another hunch."I took anthropology in college," he said. "I knew it was the key."So like anyone else with a question and Internet access, he turned to Google.He typed in "physical anthropology," and within minutes he was e-mailing Philip Walker, then president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists."Phil opened up a whole new world to me," he said. "His life's work is looking at bones."Walker's research concerned patterns of violence in ancient human populations, and he often found himself puzzling over the same questions vexing Dostie: Who is this person? How did they die? And what can we say about them when they were alive?Walker recruited colleagues -- an orthopedic surgeon, a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution -- and gave Dostie a much clearer picture of the victim.She'd been repeatedly stabbed -- a fact that had escaped the medical examiner. She was likely a Native American from Mexico or Central America, between 30 and 35; and very small, no taller than 4-foot-9 and no more than 90 pounds.Scars along her pelvic bones showed that she'd delivered at least one child, and the poor state of her teeth told Walker she'd never seen a dentist. The reinforced connections between the bones and muscles in her shoulder girdle pointed to a life of hard physical labor."This is someone who normally would be forgotten," said Walker, explaining his motivation to work on the case for free. "This is clearly a disenfranchised person who was vulnerable. People think they can just kill someone like this with no chance of getting caught."To firm his hypothesis, Walker wanted to learn more about her diet and the water she drank -- clues to her ethnic background and geographical origin.They turned to Henry Schwarcz, a Canadian geologist who analyzes the chemical composition of ancient human remains to learn more about how people lived. He'd never been approached by law enforcement."It does seem like a natural fit," Schwarcz said. "You have a person who is unknown, and all you have to go on are the bones, teeth, maybe some hair. That's what I work with."Remains that were puzzling to Dostie spoke clearly to the Canadian professor."In her childhood, she had been living mostly on corn -- cornmeal, tortillas, up to a level that would be almost nutritionally unhealthy," Schwarcz said after analyzing the isotopes in her teeth.He also looked for oxygen atoms in her teeth. These are absorbed from the water a person drinks as a child, and since most drinking water comes from local rain, they can be a good indicator of a person's origin. In this case, she seemed to have been raised in southern Mexico, or even farther south.Schwarcz also looked at her bones and hair -- cells that regenerate over the years, incorporating new information throughout a person's life.These told a different story: In the last 18 months of her life, the woman still ate a lot of corn, but her protein intake was like that of a typical North American. There was also variation in the oxygen isotopes, suggesting she'd moved around as an adult -- possibly from the United States back to southern Mexico, before returning to California, where she died."She was hard to pin down," he said.Now that he knew what he was looking for, Dostie wanted to peer deeper into her genes.Walker had given him scientific papers on human leukocyte antigen genes, which can determine ethnicity. The detective called the co-author of one paper, Henry Erlich, head of the human genetics department at Roche Molecular Systems."I was struck by his commitment to the case," said Erlich, who also agreed to work for free. "This was one dedicated sergeant."His examination confirmed the victim's genotype is found more frequently in Mexico and Central America than anywhere else.Walker also recommended a look at the woman's mitochondrial DNA. This abundant form of genetic material holds information only about a person's maternal line, unlike most other DNA, which contains contributions by both parents.The sequence typed by Roche Molecular Systems was sent for comparison to two scientists who manage databanks mitochondrial DNA. One confirmed she could be from southern Mexico.The other had a hit.Among 3,000 specimens in his databank at the University of California, Davis, David Glenn Smith found a maternal relative of the victim: a Zapotec Indian living in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca."The mtDNA sequence which matched that of the Mammoth Lakes murder victim was collected in the village of San Mateo Macuilxochitl, in the district of Tlacolula," read the e-mail Smith sent to Dostie in March, nearly three years after the body had been found.With Smith's directions to the village in hand, his good wishes and his admonition -- "that's a heck of a long way to drive," he'd warned -- Dostie was ready to go.The only problem was that this small-town detective had never heard of Oaxaca, and didn't speak Spanish, much less Zapotec.Undaunted, Dostie set off for Los Angeles, home to a large Oaxacan immigrant community. Armed with his cheery goodwill and an armful of fliers bearing a reconstruction of the victim's face, he knocked on the door of Oaxacan restaurants, Catholic churches frequented by recent immigrants, and Spanish-language radio and TV stations.He also went back to the Internet."I'm not that smart myself," he said, "but I can find a lot of people who are."A UCLA linguist connected him to a Oaxacan graduate student, who introduced Dostie to the man who would guide him through the next phase of the investigation.Ray Morales, president of the Oaxacan Business Association, was the perfect link. He spoke English, Spanish and Zapotec, and ran a money-wiring business. Immigrants could bring cash to Morales' LA storefronts, and the company would deliver them to homes in Oaxaca -- even off-the-grid villages like San Mateo.Morales was intrigued by Dostie's perseverance."This is a guy who doesn't know Oaxaca, who doesn't speak the language, taking a case he could have easily filed away," Morales said. "He's brought the case so far. We're not going to stop now. No way."So in May 2006 Morales went to San Mateo."Oaxaca can feel pretty small, the communities are pretty tight knit," said Morales. "I thought it would be pretty easy."He spread word of the missing woman through the local media. He carried fliers with her picture, and made a big splash in the surrounding villages.Morales quickly found the DNA donor, but was surprised when the woman claimed she didn't know the victim. An mtDNA match shows a family connection, but it can be a very distant one. And no one in the village seemed to know of a missing woman who matched the description.By now, Morales felt a sense of responsibility -- to the woman, who seemed to have no one else, and to the detective who had brought the case this far."Why is science pointing to this town, but no one is filing a missing person report?" he asked.Morales went back to Oaxaca.This time, he went quietly. He spent time in the village, got to know the residents, had coffee with them. Slowly, rumors and implications began to weave together, forming a picture of a woman who might be their victim.Her mother had died when she was young, and she'd left the village for a nearby town with her father and stepmother. She'd married, but didn't fit the mold of the traditional, socially conservative women of the region."She made one bad choice after another," Morales said. "Married in another town, separated, remarried, had kids, tried to give them up. That's a real no-no in these areas."She'd returned to the village about 10 years ago, then made a scandalous exit to the United States with help from a married man in La Habra, in Southern California.Certain he was onto something, Morales collected DNA samples from an uncle and a half brother. But the results were inconclusive.He needed to collect DNA from a maternal relative. The woman's sister lived in another part of Mexico, and one of the victim's own children was said to be living in another Oaxacan village. Morales began to plan another trip.Then violence erupted in Oaxaca. A teachers' strike soon evolved into mass protests involving leftists, Indian groups and students all calling for the governor's resignation.He waited out the unrest, which lasted six months. He now has a ticket to return to the village on Dec. 20 -- just in time for the annual celebration of its patron saint, San Mateo, when immigrants return for a weeklong celebration. He's spread word in town that he's looking for the woman's sister.Dostie is excited at the prospect, but he's also patient."We've been in this over three years, just trying to get to day one -- to the day we can start figuring out who knew the victim, who could have killed her," he said. "We'll get there."
