“This is the first time that I have seen a Doe identified as someone who had a death certificate and who was supposedly cremated,” said project case manager Eric Hendershott said in a statement. “The fact that Alyce’s skull ended up where it did was a real shock, but I’m glad that the team was able to identify her and reunite her with her family.”
According to the police affidavit:
In October 2002, a group of hikers from the Andersen Scout Camp in Houlton, Wis. found a trash bag in a ravine several hundred yards from the road. Inside was a human skull “in the late stages of decomposition,” the filing read. The bag and skull were turned over to the St. Croix Sheriff’s Office.
Medical professionals, a medical examiner and a forensic anthropologist examined the skull and concluded that it was severed from the body at the base of the neck, likely with a hand saw.
Peterson died “body fully intact,” on July 23, 2001, at Regions Hospital in St. Pail following a medical emergency. An autopsy found that she died from an aortic aneurysm. She was cremated a Forest Lawn two days later.
However, while her family “did receive cremated remains ... it has not been confirmed that those remains are Peterson,” the affidavit, submitted by police on Aug. 6, continued.