Professor to Analyze Unidentified Remains Recovered from Priest Lake
Greg Hampikian enjoys a good mystery, especially when solving it means exonerating someone who has been falsely imprisoned or helping a family come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
Hampikian is a professor of biological sciences and criminal justice at Boise State, where he also directs the Idaho Innocence Project. As a forensic expert, he has worked on dozens of criminal cases throughout the country and overseas, but he currently is focused on something much closer to home.
In May, unidentified skeletal remains were recovered more than 300 feet below the surface of northern Idaho’s Priest Lake. A portion of these remains initially was discovered in 2004 and suspected to have been underwater for more than 50 years, but the sample contained no DNA.
In the meantime, the original recovery team, Ralston and Associates Underwater Search and Rescue, has been coordinating with Hampikian and cold case historian Silvia Pettem. Pettem agreed to research known drowning victims in Priest Lake while Hampikian offered to perform complimentary DNA analysis of the full remains.
Using DNA samples collected from the remains and family members of known victims, Hampikian hopes to find a match. While it won’t give back what has been lost, it may help to resolve a painful mystery.
“There is nothing worse than having a missing loved one, always wondering what happened,” he said. “We hope we can at least identify the remains and put someone’s questions to rest.”
