Patricia Campbell , Missing, July 1978 ID.
Missing remains found in evidence locker, due for DNA tests POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) -- Twenty-eight years ago, Patricia Campbell went missing at a local celebration. Family members now hope DNA tests slated to be done on bones that turned up in the Oneida County Sheriff's Department after long being feared lost will provide closure for the 15-year-old girl's still-grieving mother. "It would put an end to this thing," Jeanette Campbell told the Idaho State Journal. "Look how long it's been. I want to know if it's her." It was at Pocatello's traditional Pioneer Day celebration on July 23, 1978, at this eastern Idaho city's Alameda Park, that Patricia Campbell and one of her friends, 12-year-old Tina Anderson, went missing. Three years later, three skeletons were found by hunters in a remote Oneida County gorge near the town of Malad. Tina was positively identified, and though police believe the third victim was Patricia because some of her clothing was found at the scene, no tests were ever conducted to confirm her identity. The third skeleton, that of a teenage African-American girl, was never identified. The remains were misplaced, and for years the Pocatello police and Oneida County Sheriff's Office had disagreed on where they had been stored. Curious, Oneida County Sheriff Jeff Semrad began a search for the remains, eventually finding them in his department's evidence storage area. Semrad says the three girls' deaths are the only unsolved murders in Oneida County. Pocatello police believe that the three slayings may be related to two other killings in Pocatello in 1981 in which young girls were abducted and their remains later found in remote areas. Their rediscovery clears the way for DNA testing. Semrad has agreed to send the remains - along with hair and blood samples from Patricia Campbell's living relatives - to a private DNA testing laboratory in Texas. The remains belonging to the black teen will also be analyzed and the results entered into a national missing persons database in an effort to identify her. In addition, Anderson's remains will also be sent - just to double check the result of the long-ago identification made through dental records, Semrad said. The Campbells are hoping the DNA testing finally provides them with certainty. Jeanette, 68, is suffering from Parkinson's disease and had feared she might never learn the truth about her daughter's whereabouts. Melissa Whitman, Patricia Campbell's younger sister, was just 9 years old when Patricia was abducted. Whitman was in Alameda Park that day. She remembers her older sister, as well as Tina, with a young man in a hooded sweatshirt. "We want to be able to bury Patsy," Whitman said. "We want to be able to give my mother closure while she still has her mind." --- Information from: Idaho State Journal, http://www.journalnet.com http://www.magicvalley.com/news_other/news_idaho/?storyid=/dynamic/stories/I/ID_MISSING_REMAINS_IDOL-