Bodies found in remote spots challenge Sedgwick County detectives

If a killer has the chance, he will try to put time and distance between himself and his crime.

If he’s in a hurry, investigators know, he might look for a roadside ditch to leave his victim’s body. If he has more time, maybe a tree row. If he has time to plan, he finds the right lonely dusty road, kills there and leaves the body.

“It’s not unusual to hear a gunshot somewhere out in the county any time of day,” said Sedgwick County sheriff’s Capt. Greg Pollock.

As commander of the sheriff’s investigations section, Pollock is familiar with bodies showing up in remote places. His detectives work those cases — which pose special challenges.

On Dec. 1, a hunter found the body of 54-year-old James Labat in the woods near 61st and Hillside. Although an examination found no sign of trauma, it’s considered a suspicious death, and investigators have asked the public to help with clues.

With a body obscured by tall weeds or hidden in a hedgerow, weeks or years can pass before someone stumbles onto the remains, often scattered by scavenging animals.

To investigators, it’s called a body dump.

It’s also someone’s loved one, and it’s sometimes the beginning of a mystery that lasts forever.

Map with 14 body locations

Pollock keeps a map showing the locations of 14 body-dump cases that he has worked or is tracking. His map has 14 blue dots, with case numbers for bodies found from July 1977, when a farmer spotted Sandra Talbott’s remains in southwest Sedgwick County, to December 2015, when the hunter saw Labat’s bones.

Pollock has dealt directly with seven of the 14 cases. He points out that the 14 cases are not a complete list, but provide a fairly full accounting of bodies found over the years in a ring around Wichita. Of the 14 he’s tracking, 10 remain open or unsolved.

The blue dots stretch from near Viola in the southwest part of the county to near Kechi in the northeast. There is a concentration of eight dots in the northeast section — consisting of a tight bunch of four just north of Kechi and a line of four more spaced-out dots stretching from Kechi west to Valley Center.

Pollock doesn’t know why the Kechi area has the biggest concentration. It could be partly because highways converge there, giving access.

That kind of case is often difficult to solve because sometimes the remains can’t be identified and because evidence is almost always lacking. There are no eyewitnesses or leads to secondary witnesses. Often, timelines are unclear. The bones could be years old.

And just because bones have been found doesn’t mean a coroner can rule it a homicide unless there is evidence of violence, say a bullet lying nearby or telltale damage to a skull. Still, minus the official homicide ruling, the investigators treat it as a suspicious death. It defies logic that a body would just turn up out in a hedgerow.

Investigators try to overcome the disadvantages and collect the missing puzzle pieces, turning to DNA testing to help identify the remains. They look for fragments of physical evidence, including trash and debris along the roadside, tire tread marks, shoe patterns.

“They can’t get rid of all the evidence,” Pollock said of the killers.

In some cases he has worked, investigators found blood in vehicles linked to the victim. Once, a vehicle used to transport a body had been cleaned out thoroughly, it seemed. But the killer hadn’t cleaned under a seat that investigators removed.

John and Jane Doe cases

Identification can be elusive. The Sheriff’s Office has a John Doe case from 1994 and a Jane Doe case from 2011. As the nicknames suggest, both sets of remains are still unidentified, and there wasn’t enough evidence to rule them homicides.

In both Doe cases, sheriff’s investigators turned to the FBI forensic unit for help. Based on Jane Doe’s skull, the FBI came up with a clay composite of what she look liked in the hope that someone might recognize her. Skeletal remains showed she was a black female. Her remains were found April 29, 2011, at 10000 S. 343rd St. West, on a farm near the Ninnescah River. Authorities publicized a photograph of her composite and got some tips. “But those all went cold,” Pollock said.

John Doe was found on Oct. 29, 1994, at 5600 W. 47th South. A DNA profile showed that he was a white man, about 20 to 26 years old. Although investigators have the basic profile to work with, it has never been linked to anyone. The Sheriff’s Office has sent information about John Doe to agencies in the area and across the nation. “Nothing has ever come back,” Pollock said.

How investigation unfolds

When remains like a skull are found, Pollock explained, investigators will systematically search out from the initial find sometimes with a search line, sometimes by dividing the area into grid boxes. The grid helps ensure that nothing is missed. In the most recent search, near 61st and Hillside, they looked for evidence in more than 200 grid boxes in pasture crisscrossed by trees. About a dozen of the grid boxes yielded something.

Animals had scattered James Labat’s remains on what used to be an old salvage yard.

Investigators found most of his skeleton on the first day of searching. On the second day, they found smaller parts. On the third day, they had recovered about 90 percent of his bones. The fact that it was pure skeletal remains told them that the body had been there for more than a few months.

The case remains unsolved and has not been ruled a homicide. Labat had been out of prison a short time and had stopped reporting to his parole officer. He was released from prison on June 15 and was last seen alive 10 days later in Wichita. He had a history “of running” while on parole, so his family was not overly concerned about his disappearance, Pollock said.

It’s common for the people whose bodies are found to have disappeared and to have some kind of disconnect with their families, he said. The person might not speak with their family for six months at a time. So when they disappear, there’s a lag before investigators become involved.

With Labat, investigators used dental records to identify his remains.

Clothing or bits of clothing and distinctive jewelry also can help identify someone. Clothing can suggest the person’s age.

Bones can be used to look for identifying DNA, and teeth are rich in DNA, Pollock said. But the ability to get DNA depends on how deteriorated the bone is.

The Sheriff’s Office turns to anthropologists to say how long a body has been out in the woods. Depending on weather and other factors, it can take 26 days or more of decomposition for skeletal remains to start forming.

Passing motorists, farmers, hunters, joggers find the bodies.

Sometimes the bodies show up in visible spots. One of the bodies, Amber Kostner’s, was left right across from Campus High School along 55th Street South in September 2012, Pollock noted. Her killing was solved.

Some cases take extensive teamwork. That was the situation in the killing of Dale Childress, whose body was found on East 69th North in February 2015. Law enforcement agencies in three states — Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas — helped investigate it. Childress was found shortly after his death, and a slip of paper in his pocket with a cellphone number was a key piece of evidence in solving the case, Pollock said.

Families want to know

The oldest of the body cases marked on Pollock’s map dates back 38 years. Sandra Talbott, 27, of El Dorado, was last seen in Wichita on July 13, 1977, according to Pollock’s files. Her body was found in a tree row at 111th Street South and 231st Street West, in southwestern Sedgwick County. The body was partially decomposed and had been there at least 20 days. An autopsy determined that she was a homicide victim.

According to Eagle articles from 1977, Talbott had gone to a bingo game at an El Dorado church and ended up in Wichita, where she was last seen in at least three Wichita bars. A farmer checking fields found her remains. A deputy coroner noted marks on her neck vertebrae indicating that “she had been cut with a sharp instrument.” “The only clothing she was wearing was wrapped around an ankle.” She also was found wearing a leg brace and several rings.

Sheriff Johnnie Darr had about 20 detectives and deputies working the case. They picked up several people and interviewed them. “We’ve got some interesting leads,” Darr said.

Thirty-eight years later, Talbott’s killing remains unsolved.

Families want to know what happened and why, Pollock said. Always they would rather know that the body has been found and identified than to wonder.

As investigators, he said, “We have the same frustrations they do.”

But often, he said, “You just don’t have the right pieces to pull the case together.”

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 4:06 PM with the headline "Bodies found in remote spots challenge Sedgwick County detectives."