(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A piece of embalmed femur bone that weights about two grams is all that remains of an unidentified leg found in the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing some 31 years ago, according to Angela Berg, a forensic anthropologist with Oklahoma’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Berg revealed the condition of the unidentified leg last week in a sworn declaration, which is part of the state’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit seeking records on the specimen. The lawsuit was filed in August by Kathy Sanders, who lost two grandchildren in the April 19, 1995, attack. The OKC bomb site “OKC Facts” published both the lawsuit and the state’s motion to dismiss on Sunday.
Sanders wants a trove of records on the leg, as well as physical evidence—which would include retained tissue, biological samples, and slide recuts. Sanders said in her lawsuit that she wants such material so that she can perhaps conduct a DNA test.
However, in the state’s motion to dismiss, Berg says any further testing will likely consume what’s left of the unidentified leg.
About 2 grams of embalmed femur bone is all that remains of an unidentified leg found in the rubble of the OKC bombing some 31 years ago, according to the state, which seeks to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Kathy Sanders.
The state says any further testing will consume all that's… https://t.co/KBy0aA0VQR pic.twitter.com/soEZG6SA4B
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Berg explained that the majority of the leg was buried on December 11, 1999, together with other unidentified “group” tissue, in a single casket on the Capitol grounds in Oklahoma City.
In November 2015, a piece of femur from the leg was sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification to attempt DNA analysis. However, that test “did not render any reportable results,” she said. Now, all that remains of the leg is a piece of embalmed femur bone that weighs roughly two grams, “which is a little smaller than the size of a quarter,” she added.
“Because OCME has such a small amount of embalmed bone tissue remaining, the next attempt at DNA analysis will likely consume the entirety of what remains,” Berg said.
The state says the unidentified leg is still an open case. Berg explained that advances in DNA testing may make it possible to test the 2-gram bone piece.
“There is potential promise in a new protocol for degraded bone samples analyzed with Massively Parallel or Next Generation Sequencing, which OCME is actively pursuing. The small size of the available sample and the chemical impediments from embalming remain a serious consideration for further testing,” she said.
Along with Berg’s declaration, the state is seeking to dismiss Sanders’s lawsuit on the grounds that she has no legal right to the material she seeks.
A judge has yet to rule on the matter.
Sanders and other OKC bomb researchers believe the unidentified leg may belong to an additional co-conspirator to bomber Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, who assisted in the plot.
Nichols himself told Sanders in a letter that the leg probably belonged to a co-conspirator of McVeigh.
“What will change things and break the case wide open is to do a genetic DNA geneology [sic] trace on that unidentified leg,” Nichols said in the letter, which Sanders attached to her lawsuit as an exhibit. “I don’t know nor understand why this has not been diligently pursued. If you really want to get to the bottom of the OKC bombing then do a geneology [sic] trace on that leg.”
According to the book Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed, and Why it Matters, the FBI later surmised that the missing limb belonged to Cynthia Campbell Brown, a Secret Service agent killed in the bombing. However, the FBI didn’t want to test its theory because “doing so could raise the question of whose leg she was buried with—and perhaps set off an uncontrollable chain reaction of exhumations and mistaken body-part re-identifications,” the book said.
“If the extra leg did belong to a coconspirator, he was never investigated, much less identified,” the book added.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
