Senator to ask FBI for help in 1948 murder: Sheriff says FBI declined request
more than 2 years ago
By VINDE WELLS
vwells@shawnews.com
Shaw News Service
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| Mary Jane Reed was found shot to death in June 1948; her murderer was never found. |
OREGON – An Oregon restaurant owner who wants the FBI to investigate a murder 6 decades cold has enlisted the help of a U.S. senator.
Mike Arians sent a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asking him to request a federal investigation into the June 1948 shooting death of Oregon teenager Mary Jane Reed, whose brother, Warren, lives in Rock Falls.
“We’re just looking for the truth. We’re trying to give the Reed family some closure,” Arians said in a news conference last week.
In a letter back, Durbin promised to contact the FBI, but asked Arians to allow 30 to 60 days for the agency’s answer.
Arians said he has asked Ogle County Sheriff Greg Beitel to do the same, but “he refuses to call the FBI and ask for their assistance.”
Beitel said Tuesday that he called FBI officials in Rockford more than 2 years ago, and they declined to get involved.
The 17-year-old Reed failed to return home after a date on June 24, 1948. She and Stan Skridla, 28, Rockford, apparently her companion the night she disappeared, were found shot to death.
Skridla’s body was discovered the next morning on a road south of Oregon. He had been shot five times. Her body was found 4 days later in a ditch west of Oregon. She had been shot once in the head.
The Sheriff’s Department investigated the cold case in 2005 and identified possible suspects, both of whom are dead, and both of whom Beitel declines to name.
Arians, who heads the Mary Jane Reed Foundation, has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with the results of that investigation, which included an exhumation and autopsy. He said several experts agree that not all the body parts exhumed that year belong to Mary Jane.
“After close scrutiny of four reports composed and collaborated by no less than 10 board-certified forensic anthropologists, the only determination that can be made is that the 2005 exhuming and post-mortem examination of Mary Jane Reed was either negligently or intentionally botched by those involved,” Arians said, reading from a prepared statement.
He declined to name his experts.
Beitel said his department and state police “investigated as thoroughly and comprehensively as we could. I would like to know where and what is the alleged botch.”
Arians points to X-rays of Mary Jane’s skull and vertebrae taken during the autopsy that, he says, show that the C-1 vertebra, the one closest to the skull, is broken.
The C-1 vertebra returned after the autopsy is intact, however, proving the bones were switched before they were returned to Warren Reed, Arians said.
Beitel said he has no way of knowing whether the bones Arians is referring to are the same ones exhumed. “The chain of custody has been compromised,” he said.
Mary Jane’s remains were reburied, except for the skull, seven vertebrae and a femur, which were sent to the Illinois State Crime Lab for further testing.
Arians also contends the skull found in Mary Jane’s coffin is not hers.
Two years ago, Linda Klepinger, a forensic anthropologist and University of Illinois anthropology professor emeritus, examined the skull and vertebrae and said they do not match and could not come from the same person.
Arians says that the skull was switched sometime before Mary Jane was buried, and that the sheriff’s department, coroner and medical examiner at the time could have been involved in the switch.
In 2006, an Ogle County judge ordered Mary Jane’s bones returned to her brother, over the objections of Coroner Louis Finch IV, State’s Attorney John B. Roe, and Beitel. They asked the judge to instead turn them over to a funeral director for eventual reburial, to protect the chain of custody.
The bones are in a vault in Rockford, Arians said.
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