A skull found in the wall of an Illinois home in the 1970s was identified this week as that of a Civil War-era teenage girl — whose corpse was likely snatched by grave robbers long ago, authorities said.
Investigators solved the long-simmering cold case by matching the gal’s DNA to her great, great grandson’s genetic material — revealing her identity more than 150 years after her death, according to the Kane County Coroner’s Office.
The skull belonged to 17-year-old Esther Granger, who died during childbirth in 1866 — and was probably a victim of thieves who dug up her body and sold it for medical experimentation, the officials said.
Investigators have determined that a skull discovered in the wall of an Illinois home in 1978 was that of an Indiana teenager who died more than 150 years ago, authorities announced Thursday. AP“There’s this sense of closure,” great, great grandson Wayne Silvar, 69, told ABC Chicago. “I wish my mom was still here so I could tell her. She’d love it.”
The morbid mystery began in 1978 when a homeowner in Batavia, Illinois, found the skull stuffed behind drywall while he was renovating the place, officials said.
The homeowner called police, who launched an investigation — but the case soon went cold and the skull was sent to the Batavia Depot Museum for storage.
Granger’s remains were forgotten until March 2021, when supervisors at the museum discovered it in a box while cleaning and called police again.
Cops sent the skull to the Kane County Coroner’s Office, which worked with Othram Laboratories to build a DNA profile from the skull.
They then built a family tree and tracked down Silvar, who submitted a DNA sample, allowing them to confirm her identity.
Working with a forensic laboratory in Texas, Kane County Coroner’s Office was able to suggested the skull was Esther Granger, a 17-year-old woman who died during childbirth in 1866 in Merrillville, Indiana. APThe coroners also generated an image of what the young woman probably looked like — complete with brown hair and a stern facial expression.
Granger was born in 1848 and died in Merrillville, Indiana, shortly after giving birth to her first daughter. She was buried there by her husband.
It’s unclear how her remains ended up in Batavia — roughly 80 miles from where she died — but Kane County Coroner Rob Russell said grave robbers likely sold her body to physicians.
In the 1800s, doctors were desperate to learn more about human anatomy, so they often paid top dollar for fresh corpses on which to perform medical experiments — fueling the eerie black market trade, according to historians.
Granger’s skull was finally laid to rest at the West Batavia Cemetery in August, officials said.
