DNA test can’t ID circus fire victims

HARTFORD — Authorities could not determine through DNA testing the identity of two victims of the 1944 Hartford circus fire exhumed last October, the chief state medical examiner said Tuesday.

In a brief statement Tuesday, Chief Medial Examiner James Gill said DNA analysis of the remains of the two victims exhumed were “unsuccessful.”

“Due to the condition of the remains, there was a high bacterial content that interfered with testing,” Gill said.

He said the samples taken from the exhumed remains would be retained for possible testing in the future that might be more advanced than what is currently available.

Monday marked 76 years since the big top of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus caught fire and burned to the ground in minutes on July 6, 1944, killing 168 people and injuring nearly 700 others.

Gill started to research exhuming the bodies of the unidentified victims after the Hartford Courant asked the chief medical examiner questions about the possibility of identifying the unknown fire victims through advances in DNA technology.

Instead of digging up all five unidentified bodies buried at Windsor’s Northwood Cemetery, Gill exhumed the two that might match victim Grace Fifield’s granddaughter, Sandra Sumrow, after the Courant found Sumrow — the daughter of Fifield’s daughter, Beverly — and she agreed to give a sample.

Sumrow told the Courant that her grandmother, who lived in Newport, Vt., was visiting family in Wethersfield. She told the Courant that Fifield went to the circus with her two kids — twins Ivan and Barbara, who survived the fire.

Gill told the Courant it is likely Fifield’s remains were “originally misidentified and released to the wrong next of kin.” He told the Courant if the remains of the two women who were exhumed can be identified, it could help lead to what happened to Fifield.

The state has turned to DNA Doe Project for additional testing to see if any of the relatives of these two unidentified women might have used one of the popular DNA ancestry services, Gill told the Courant. He told the Courant the analysis could take months.

DNA Doe Project Co-Founder Colleen Fitzpatrick told the Courant since the bodies were badly burned, and have been buried for three-quarters of a century, it could be difficult to establish the entire genome sequencing needed.

The remains of the exhumed circus fire victims, Fitzpatrick told the Courant, have been sent to a bone lab.