Investigators Study Bone Fragments for Bradbury Case Link

The top of a child’s skull shaped like a small bowl with a curiously smooth edge was among several pounds of bone and clothing fragments that will be analyzed for clues following a two-day search for what might be the remains of 3-year-old Laura Bradbury.

The smoothness of the skull perplexed sheriff’s investigators, who theorized Tuesday morning that the child’s remains had been gnawed by coyotes.

“The skull had been carried into the area by animals--coyotes--chewed on, eaten as much as possible,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Capt. Gene E. Bowlin.

Bowlin would not say if the skull appeared to have been cut or sawed, but the edge was “a clean break, generally speaking,” unlike the other bone fragments, which had jagged edges.

Sheriff’s Department investigators said the partial skull, discovered Saturday by hikers in a desolate campground, was among human and animal bone fragments, some of them contained in coyote droppings, that were collected in 20 bags.

Sheriff’s Deputy Darryl Heller, who led a band of 130 in the search, said the largest piece of fabric found in the search “was smaller than the tip of a cigarette.”

It was a grim return to the Indian Cove campground area of Joshua Tree for Heller. He was among hundreds who searched for Laura Bradbury after the Huntington Beach girl followed her brother to an outdoor toilet on Oct. 18, 1984, and was never seen again.

The skull piece and other remains were found about one mile northwest of the Bradbury campsite and about two miles south of California 62.

“For Mike Bradbury (Laura’s father) this could set his mind at ease,” Heller said, “and ease the minds of the earlier searchers.”

Mike Bradbury had remained at the campsite for more than three weeks. Later he and his wife, Patty, devoted all of their time to trying to find their daughter.

Mike Bradbury said Tuesday night that the information he has received “really doesn’t alarm me. It doesn’t really tell me anything that it’s Laura.” He charged that the media were “jumping the gun, at our emotional expense” in reporting that the remains were that of his daughter.

Bradbury, who is vacationing outside of Southern California with his wife and their two other children, said he still believes that his daughter was kidnaped, taken outside of California and sold by an adoption ring.

But he did not discount the possibility raised by the findings in the desert. When a San Bernardino’s sheriff’s official called him Monday, Bradbury said, “my first inclination was to go right to the scene.” Sheriff’s Department officials persuaded him not to.

“You have to be realistic,” Bradbury said. “Anything that’s factual, you have to look at closely as a possibility.”

His wife, he said, was “OK, under the circumstances,” although the news “was pretty hard on her.”

The family has “been spending some quiet time together, trying to gather our thoughts,” he said, but “we don’t want to get get caught in the middle of a void of information.” He said the family expects to return home by the end of the week.

Laura’s disappearance coincided with rising recognition of the problem of missing children, and she became a symbol for a movement that has swept the nation.

Jim Schalow, the Bradburys’ private investigator, said he believes the case “is absolutely not over.”

Investigators “have nothing specifically to relate it (the remains) to the Bradbury matter except for proximity,” Schalow said.

The bone fragments have been shipped to Orange County, where Judy Suchey, a Cal State Fullerton anthropologist, will examine them to determine the sex, age and race of the child.

Because Laura Bradbury had no dental records, bone fractures or any other identifiable marks, Heller speculated that “the clothing may be the key.”

Pathologists in Agreement

Laura was wearing a kelly-green sweat shirt, purple pants and rainbow-colored sandals when she disappeared, but investigators did not describe the color of the fabric fragments.

Although Suchey refused to comment Tuesday on the fragments, Bowlin said her preliminary report generally agreed with the conclusions of San Bernardino County pathologist Irving Root. Root said Monday that the skull came from a child between the ages of 2 and 5 who had been dead not more than two years. The skull, which was bleached white, had been exposed to light for about six months.

The only discrepancy between Root’s and Suchey’s analyses, Bowlin said, was that Suchey estimated that the skull had been exposed for only three to four months.

The skull, lying under a bush, caught the attention of a man and woman hiking Saturday afternoon. Investigators, who refused to disclose the identity of the hikers, said they were from the nearby Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms. The couple handed the bones over to investigators Sunday morning, Bowlin said.

Bone Sightings Not Unusual

Sheriff’s deputies said it’s not unusual for hikers to turn up the dismembered remains of humans in Morongo Valley, often the death site of stranded mountaineers and a dumping ground for bodies from murders committed elsewhere.

“I’ve had people find hands, feet, fingers, wrap ‘em up and bring ‘em in here,” said Sgt. Jim Stalnakel.

The find prompted a massive search on Sunday in a 2 1/2-square-mile area along a dry wash spiked with cactus and yucca plants.

Deputy Heller said investigators gathered several pounds of animal and human bone fragments in the search. Some of the bone fragments were more than 80 years old, he said.

“This was an Indian burial ground once,” Heller said, referring to the area around the base of a boulder-strewn mountain overlooking the Indian Cove campground.

Heller said it was the same area combed a year ago by so many searchers that “it looked like it was covered with ants.”

Many Involved in Search

Throughout the area Tuesday, dozens of plants were tagged with yellow plastic tape, indicating where evidence had been located. Other than that, there was little sign that more than 100 people had scoured the area, save for bootprints and the tire tracks of four-wheel drive vehicles in the soft sand.

Bowlin said that although the find represents the first major break in the Bradbury case in five months, it raises more questions than it answers.

“Where was the body?” Bowlin asked. “We’re not saying necessarily that it was in a grave. It could have been in a crevice or a coyote den. We just don’t know the answers.”

There had been reports of three sightings of Laura Bradbury as late as Wednesday, Sheriff’s Department investigators said. None panned out. One was in Garden Grove, one was in Arkansas and one in the Coachella Valley.