Oregon man calls Reed skull switch idea 'ridiculous'
SHAW NEWS SERVICE
OREGON - The idea that the skull in Mary Jane Reed's casket belongs to anyone but her is "ridiculous," said a retired Oregon mortician who helped remove the body of the murdered 17-year-old from a ditch along Devil's Backbone Road.
Reed and her companion, Stanley Skridla, 28, of Rockford, were shot to death June 24, 1948. Their bodies were found in separate locations, his June 25 and hers June 29, and their homicides never have been solved.
Former Oregon Mayor Mike Arians, a friend of the Reed family, said a forensic anthropologist hired by the family examined some of Reed's exhumed remains and concluded that the skull from her coffin was not hers.
He said he has asked the FBI and the Federal Bureau for Victims of Violent Crimes to look into her murder.
In her report, Linda Klepinger, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana, said the skull and one vertebrae do not match up with the other vertebrae taken from the coffin.
Klepinger did not return phone calls.
Reed's body was exhumed in 2005 and an autopsy performed. The skull, vertebrae and a femur were sent to the Illinois State Crime Lab for examination, but no clues to her death were revealed, the Ogle County Sheriff's Department said.
The bones were returned to her only surviving sibling, Warren Reed of Rock Falls.
Because much of Reed's body is obscured by vegetation in photos taken when her body was found, Reed said he cannot be sure her head was there.
William Tremble has no such doubts.
He was 25 at the time and working for his brother, the local funeral director.
"I went out there and helped pick her up. Her head was with her body," Tremble said. "The body was not in good shape - she'd been out there for several days. You wouldn't have known it was her."
Her body was taken to the funeral home where Dr. Lamburtus Warmolts, a local physician, performed the autopsy, said Tremble, who later became a licensed mortician himself.
"They said she was shot in the back of the head. They couldn't do all the testing then that they do now - it wasn't available," Tremble said.
Tremble was not present at the autopsy, but when it was done, he helped place the girl's body - and head - in a zippered, heavy-duty bag, because of the advanced decomposition. After that, "the funeral was held and we buried her out at Daysville Cemetery," he said.
He also helped pick up Skridla's body, which was found on County Farm Road. "We brought his body back to the funeral home, and as I remember, a Rockford funeral director came and got it," he said.
Reed and Skridla apparently had a date on June 24. Skridla's car was seen late that night parked on County Farm Road, a local lovers lane south of Oregon. His body was found early in the morning of June 25; he had been shot five times. His car later was found near the corner of state Route 2 and West Pines Road.
