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The family of missing Indiana University college student Lauren Spierer could know in a matter of days if a skull found 60 miles from where she disappeared belongs to the college student.
A fisherman found the skull in the White River in Indianapolis. Ballew said there is no circumstantial evidence or tip to suggest that it might be Spierer, a Greensburgh resident who vanished June 3, 2011, after a night out with friends in Bloomington, Indiana. Divers searched the river for additional remains but did not find anything else.
The skull has been sent to a forensic anthropologist, who will try to determine its gender, age and race. A tooth will be extracted from the skull to see if it matches with Spierer’s dental records, which are on file in a national database.
In the past year, about a dozen initially unidentified bodies have turned up within a couple hundred miles of Bloomington. None of them was Spierer’s.
Robert Spierer, the missing student’s father, said that he has no reason to believe that this is different than any of the other false alarms, but he said he is still eager to hear the results.
As she waits for word on the fate of her daughter, Charlene Spierer issued an open letter to those responsible for Lauren’s disappearance.
“To Whom This May Concern: It sickens me to write to you once again, but I have no choice,” Spierer wrote. “Time continues to pass and I cannot let you forget about Lauren. I hope I am making you have as many sleepless nights as I have. I hope that someday, your parents, your siblings, your friends will all be in a courtroom when your true self is revealed.”
It would typically take eight weeks to get test results on a human skull and Spierer said that an eight-week wait would be 80,640 minutes of agony. She concluded her letter with, “We are waiting to find out if the skull found in the White River might be Lauren’s. I find it incomprehensible that if by change you are reading this, you know the answer already.”
