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The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office plans to conduct a ground search and use cadaver dogs later this week to see whether more human remains can be found near Rainier.
That’s because the top of a skull was found Sunday morning in the 11000 block of state Route 507 by a resident riding their ATV in the area.
The ATV didn’t kick up loose soil and uncover the skull bone; instead, the rider saw the top of the skull lying on the ground, Sgt. Cameron Simper said Tuesday.
But it had been there a while, Simper said.
That partial skull bone, which doesn’t have any facial features, is set to be delivered to the King County Medical Examiner this week, so that an anthropologist on staff can try to determine age and gender, Thurston County Coroner Gary Warnock said Monday.
Identifying the person is going to be hard because there were no teeth, he said.
Meanwhile, the phones have been ringing off the hook at the sheriff’s office, Simper said, with people sharing their theories about who it might be.
Simper acknowledged that the sheriff’s office has some cold cases.
“It potentially could be any one of them,” he said, but added it is too early to tell and he wasn’t going to speculate.
Readers also have sent emails to The Olympian, asking whether the skull belongs to Nancy Moyer, a mother of two who was 36 when she went missing from her Tenino home in March 2009. She has never been found.
