Visual evidence helps solve bones mystery
Forensic experts add photo, video clues in conclusive finding
When it came to solving the mystery at last of whether the bones found in the wall of a home in Houston’s Heights neighborhood belonged to Mary Cerruti, it came down to two things: her jaw and her chin.
A pile of evidence already had added up. The remains, discovered last March, reflected those of a small, white woman over the age of 40, such as Mary. And they were found in Mary’s home, more than a year after she had gone missing and lost the home to foreclosure.
Still, that hadn’t quite been enough. The identification wasn’t made official by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences until Tuesday afternoon.
In an interview Wednesday, Identification Manager Sharon Derrick explained how two additional pieces of evidence helped them make their determination conclusively.
First was a photo of Mary, provided by the owners of Casa Ramirez, a shop in the Heights where Mary had worked, for publication in the Houston Chronicle. The shape of the chin — almost indented — and jaw — very square — in the photo visually matched the shape of the bones, Derrick said.
Second was a video of Mary recorded at a Houston Planning Commission meeting Feb. 14, 2013. Investigators had hoped that the glasses she wore in the video would match the ones found with the remains. They didn’t, but they found something else.
As Mary speaks in the video, Derrick said they noticed she seemed to have difficulty moving her jaw. She speaks for 38 seconds. A planning commission member asked her questions for some 30 seconds more.
To an untrained eye, it’s hard to see the jaw movement, but Derrick said it looked to them that she was moving it slowly and with effort, a condition also explained by looking at how the bones fit together.
So, together with the other evidence, they decided that the remains must belong to Mary. DNA hadn’t matched. They hadn’t found useful medical records. But this was enough.
It was a “comprehensive identification,” they called it.
“We added all the other information that we had,” Derrick said. “We never just do a best guess.”