Through a partnership with the California Department of Justice and the forensic genealogy laboratory Othram Inc., the sheriff's office was able to identify the woman as Kerry Ann Cummings, who was about 25 when she went missing in 1997.
In October of that year, a duck hunter located partial human remains in Ryan Slough, north of Eureka, and additional partial remains were recovered on Clam Beach the following January. Efforts to identify both were unsuccessful, though subsequent testing identified them as having belonged to the same person.
Ford infamously turned himself into the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office main station Nov. 3, 1998, walking in with a severed breast in his pocket, and subsequently admitted to murdering several women throughout the north state, including the woman whose partial remains were found in Ryan Slough, according to a press release. Ford was subsequently convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to death, and currently is held on San Quentin Prison's death row.
But efforts to identify Cummings' remains have continued for decades, with investigators checking her DNA profile against missing persons databases, found remains and the National Unidentified Persons Index.
In December, the sheriff's office and Department of Justice partnered with Othram Inc. in an effort to determine if advanced DNA testing could help identify Cummings, or at least a close relative of hers.
Investigators contacted Kathy, asking if she had any missing family members. She replied that her sister, Kerry, had been missing since the mid-1990s. Kathy later told investigators that her sister had been suffering from an untreated mental illness and was couch-surging in the Eugene, Oregon area when the family lost contact with her.
“Kerry was beautiful, funny, smart and an artist. She was great at making us laugh,” Kathie Cummings, told investigators, according to the release. “It is devastating what mental illness can do in a span of only two short years.”
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office has identified one of serial killer Wayne Adam Ford's victims 25 years after her dismembered body was found through advanced forensic...
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Bless her!
