Woman was found dead with man in shallow grave in 1974, cops say. Now she’s identified
A woman’s skeletal remains were found in a shallow grave alongside a man’s in 1974 in Connecticut, troopers said.
DNA testing helped identify her 50 years later as Linda Sue Childers of Louisville, Kentucky, the Connecticut State Police said in a March 13 news release.
Childers’ remains were discovered May 30, 1974, in a shallow grave near a home in Ledyard, police said.
Childers and the man whose remains she was found with were killed Dec. 31, 1970, troopers said, and a witness of the homicides led police to the grave.
The man she was found with was identified as Gustavous Lee Carmichael, according to DNASolves. He was “a convicted serial bank robber.”
Childers was identified as her alias, so her real identity wasn’t verified, police said.
The two people accused in their deaths were arrested and convicted, police said, and they later died.
Authorities try to identify Childers
Over the years, police attempted to identify Childers multiple times.
Case data was submitted into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2011, in addition to dental X-rays.
A year later, her DNA was added to the Combined DNA Index System, a federal database. But no matches came up.
Then in 2022, a sample of her DNA was “extracted, sequenced, and uploaded into a forensic investigative genetic genealogy database” by Othram, a lab in The Woodlands, Texas, that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
Investigators were then able to identify Childers’ sister in January. Later, Childers’ daughter provided a DNA sample, police said.
Police said her sample confirmed the remains belonged to Childers.
