Identified! PA - Milanville, WhtFem, NamUs UP 73245, Apr'20 - Selina M. Hoheusle

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CCJD

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The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)


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Unidentified Person / NamUs #UP73245 Female, White / Caucasian
Status Unidentified
Date Body Found April 3, 2020
Location Found Milanville, Pennsylvania
Estimated Age Range--
Case Information

Case Numbers
ME/C Case Number 2020-0403-01

Demographics
Sex Female
Race / Ethnicity White / Caucasian
Estimated Age Group Adult
Estimated Age Range (Years)--
Estimated Year of Death--
Estimated PMI--
Height Cannot Estimate
WeightCannot Estimate

Circumstances

Type Unidentified Deceased
Date Body Found April 3, 2020
NamUs Case Created September 2, 2020
ME/C QA Reviewed--

Location Found
Location Milanville, Pennsylvania 18443
County Wayne County

Circumstances of Recovery Found beside High Bridge Road in wooded area, down embankment sloping toward river.
Details of Recovery


Inventory of Remains --
Condition of Remains Not recognizable - Near complete or complete skeleton
Circumstance Notes
Estimated death > 1 yr prior to discovery

Physical Description
Hair Color Unknown
Head Hair Description --
Body Hair Description --
Facial Hair Description --
Left Eye Color Unknown
Right Eye Color Unknown
Eye Description --
Distinctive Physical Features
Item
Description
Other distinctive physical characteristic
Unusual dentition


Clothing and Accessories
No Information Entered
Additional Case Info


Images & Documents
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Artist rendering
Uploaded: September 2, 2020
Forensic Reconstruction

Contacts
Investigating Agencies
Case Owner
Pennsylvania State Police

Address 14 Collan Park Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
County Wayne County
Main Phone (570) 253-7126
General Email --
Website URL --

Agency Case Number 2020-0403-01
Date ReportedApril 3, 2020
Gregory Allen, Criminal Investigator

Wayne County Coroner's Office

Address 925 Court Street, County Courthouse Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
County Wayne County
Main Phone (570) 253-4952
 
Hi. Just got into WebSleuthing yesterday and this is my attempt at a find. Feel free to tell me that I'm totally off. I promise I'll get better at this as I do more of these. I'm from Pennsylvania, so I was instantly attracted to the cases in PA and this one stood out. I believe this unidentified person may be Lisa Ann Schmidt.

LSchmidt3.jpg
LSchmidt2.jpg
LSchmidt.jpg


DoeNetwork: 1713DFNJ - Lisa Ann Schmidt
NamUS: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

-Lisa went missing in 1994, which would explain why only the skeleton was found.
-Her features match up well with the sketch: Shape of face, nose, hair, larger bottom lip than upper lip, and the overbite of the teeth
-Locations make sense with Lisa being from New Jersey and the body being found in Pennsylvania. The locations are 2 hours 4 minutes apart, so it's possible that she was abducted, robbed, and killed by someone or a group of people, and from there they decided to drive 2 hours Northwest into a different state with the intention of dropping off her body along the Delaware River, but then chose the dense woods near it instead.

Let me know what you think and if you think this could be it, I'll contact both agencies in PA and NJ tomorrow morning. Thank you!
 
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Alby said:
Hi. Just got into WebSleuthing yesterday and this is my attempt at a find. Feel free to tell me that I'm totally off. I promise I'll get better at this as I do more of these. I'm from Pennsylvania, so I was instantly attracted to the cases in PA and this one stood out. I believe this unidentified person may be Lisa Ann Schmidt.

LSchmidt3.jpg
LSchmidt2.jpg
LSchmidt.jpg


DoeNetwork: 1713DFNJ - Lisa Ann Schmidt
Thank you!
Click to expand...

I definitely see a facial resemblance.
 
Alby said:
-Lisa went missing in 1994, which would explain why only the skeleton was found.
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snipped for focus

Welcome to Websleuths, Alby!

Biggest fly in the ointment is this from the NamUs case file:
Circumstance Notes
Estimated death > 1 yr prior to discovery

I know it's only an estimate but how did they come up with that? The state of the remains or the condition of the area where she was found? For instance - leaf fall, i.e. did the skeleton only have the last year's leaves on top of the remains? Were there plants, tree roots, etc. entwined in the remains, possibly indicating they'd been there for a while? The area around the remains can sometimes be a good indicator as to how old the skeleton is.

Oddly, until this case showed up on NamUs, I'd never heard of it and still can't find anything in the media about the discovery.
 
CCJD said:
snipped for focus

Welcome to Websleuths, Alby!

Biggest fly in the ointment is this from the NamUs case file:
Circumstance Notes
Estimated death > 1 yr prior to discovery

I know it's only an estimate but how did they come up with that? The state of the remains or the condition of the area where she was found? For instance - leaf fall, i.e. did the skeleton only have the last year's leaves on top of the remains? Were there plants, tree roots, etc. entwined in the remains, possibly indicating they'd been there for a while? The area around the remains can sometimes be a good indicator as to how old the skeleton is.

Oddly, until this case showed up on NamUs, I'd never heard of it and still can't find anything in the media about the discovery.
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The 1 year thing was definitely something I had considered. I hadn’t thought about the area around the body though like you did. The roots, leaves, etc. are all fantastic points. After seeing the 1 year thing about the bones, I tried doing some research on what the difference would be like in decomposing between 1 year old bones and 20 year old bones. From what I found, it could be possible for bones to look similar from 1 year to 20 years, but it really depends on a lot of environmental factors, genetic factors, etc.
 
Daisy1980 said:
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
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Interesting that this woman didn’t have a profile on the Doe Network, but she would make a lot sense. I wish she had more pictures for us to analyze on her NamUs. I feel still feel like the sketch looks like Lisa, but in terms of location, Katherine only lived 10 minutes away from where this body was found. Sketches also aren’t always perfect, so this could easily be her. The NamUs said she owned a nursery. I tried briefly to find an address, but couldn’t really find one. I’ll recheck in the morning after some sleep. Katherine was a great find Daisy!

Edit: I found the nursery and it’s 20 minutes from where the body was found, not 10, but still incredibly close. I also found an old newspaper article about Katherine VanDine and it said there’s some suspicion that she was murdered by her son because of arguments about her selling the 212 acre nursery.
 
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I talked with the investigator and he let me know some information about the body that wasn't public yet and it ruled out Lisa Ann Schmidt. The skull is likely from someone 30+ years old or older. He also let me know who he thinks it is and as soon as he showed me who he thought it was, it was pretty easy to see that he is likely right.

Selina M Hoheusle

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She has the 6 distinctive teeth and the body was found 15 minutes away from where she went missing.

She didn't have a profile on DoeNetwork again, just like Katherine VanDine, so I think I'm going to stick solely to NamUs from now on since DoeNetwork failed me twice on my first attempt at being a websleuth.
 
Alby said:
I talked with the investigator and he let me know some information about the body that wasn't public yet and it ruled out Lisa Ann Schmidt. The skull is likely from someone 30+ years old or older. He also let me know who he thinks it is and as soon as he showed me who he thought it was, it was pretty easy to see that he is likely right.

Selina M Hoheusle

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She has the 6 distinctive teeth and the body was found 15 minutes away from where she went missing.

She didn't have a profile on DoeNetwork again, just like Katherine VanDine, so I think I'm going to stick solely to NamUs from now on since DoeNetwork failed me twice on my first attempt at being a websleuth.
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Well done! So it would appear that the skeleton was there longer than the "1 yr prior to discovery" noted on NamUs.

As far as using only NamUs - don't limit yourself. Not all cases are on NamUs (yet). Doe Network can be a good resource, especially when looking for biometric info (dentals, fingerprints, DNA) since NamUs stopped making that info publicly viewable in 2018. Charley Project doesn't have unidentified persons but is an excellent resource for the missing and often has much more detail than what NamUs has (as does Doe Network). None of the three sites are 100% but all are very good tools to start out with.
 
Alby said:
I talked with the investigator and he let me know some information about the body that wasn't public yet and it ruled out Lisa Ann Schmidt. The skull is likely from someone 30+ years old or older. He also let me know who he thinks it is and as soon as he showed me who he thought it was, it was pretty easy to see that he is likely right.

Selina M Hoheusle

Thumbnail
Thumbnail


She has the 6 distinctive teeth and the body was found 15 minutes away from where she went missing.

She didn't have a profile on DoeNetwork again, just like Katherine VanDine, so I think I'm going to stick solely to NamUs from now on since DoeNetwork failed me twice on my first attempt at being a websleuth.
Click to expand...


Both are really good matches visually. How was the investigator able to rule out Lisa? Age? In a lot of what I've read they are not able to get a super accurate age for skulls and group them from the ages of 20-60.
 
TheBlackParade said:
Both are really good matches visually. How was the investigator able to rule out Lisa? Age? In a lot of what I've read they are not able to get a super accurate age for skulls and group them from the ages of 20-60.
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I think it was both the age and that he already had DNA being sent away to be tested as Selina M Moheusle. I think he may have taken Lisa a little bit more into consideration if he wasn't already pretty sure that it was Selina. He knew of VanDine and had considered her already because he is the lead investigator on her case as well, but Lisa was a new name for him. For the skull aging accuracy, I'm not 100% sure since I'm still fairly new to this. It's something I'd have to do more research on myself before being able to give you a confident answer on it, but he's the professional and working with all the evidence instead of the small subset of limited evidence that we as the public get, so there had to have been something or multiple things that led to him being able to tell that the skeleton was from someone older than Lisa.
 
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