Bones Found Near Cal-Sag Channel Turned Over To Texas Crime Lab

PALOS HEIGHTS, IL — A bag of bones found hanging from a tree near the Cal-Sag Channel in December 2022 is now in the hands of a Texas lab specializing in forensic genetic genealogy.

The bones were found a few days after Christmas, when passersby walking the bike path at Lake Katherine Nature Center in Palos Heights noticed something suspicious hanging from a tree adjacent to the canal.

The passersby took the bag off the tree and looked inside, where they found bones and an asphalt rock.

“The assumption was that a moving car had tried to throw the bag into the canal from the Southwest Highway overpass but missed the water,” said Chief Bill Czajkowski, of the Palos Heights Police Department. “The bones ended up hanging from a tree instead, adjacent to the water.”

The bones were sent to the Cook County Medical Examiner, where anthropologists there determined them to be a mix of human and animal bones.

The wrappings the bones were found in were sent to another private crime lab Palos Heights police use, Northeastern Illinois Regional Crime Lab in Mundelein.

“We pay a fee to a private lab instead of the state lab which has a backlog so we can get a quicker turnaround on fingerprints , DNA and blood/urine kits for DUIs,” Czajkowski said.

The age and origins of the bones remains unknown.

The Cook County Medical Examiner has recently turned the bones over to Woodland, Tex.-based Othram that works with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies across the United States using the latest technology to analyze DNA and other forensic evidence to close previously unsolved cases.

Othram investigators compare results to public databases to hopefully find a match. The families are contacted to determine if they have a missing person and to submit a DNA sample with family members who submitted their DNA in the hopes of finding a possible match. The families are then contacted to determine if they have a missing person and to submit a DNA sample to confirm a match.

Palos Heights police and Othram have established a crowdfunding platform with DNASolves, and are asking for the public’s help in covering the $75,000 costs to conduct advanced DNA testing and perhaps bring closure to a family missing a loved one.

Meanwhile, Czajkowski said police have no reason to believe that a crime occurred in Palos Heights.

“It’s somewhat bizarre. We think it was just someone passing through who weighed the bones down in the hopes that it would sink in the canal,” the police chief said. “Our investigators did a great job following up on this and determining the process to find the origin of the bones.”