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MAYVILLE – The Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office has identified one of the two bodies recovered last week in the Town of Portland as a missing woman from Buffalo.
Chautauqua County Sheriff Jim Quattrone says the body of 50-year-old Marquita Mull was identified after the Mercyhurst Forensic Anthropology Department was able to match her dental records.
Last Sunday a hiker spotted human remains in a wooded area along the “rails to trail” area near Woleben Road in Portland.
Following an additional search of the area the next day, investigators located a second set of remains nearby; which has now been identified as Mull.
“While looking at a Western New York Missing and Unidentified Person Facebook page, there was a flyer on their alerting us that there was a possible missing person from the City of Buffalo,” explained Quattrone. “So, we send that information to Mercyhurst Anthropology division, we were able to obtain medical records and x-rays of this person and Mercyhurst was able to compare those.”
He says Mull was reported missing on July 18 to Buffalo Police. She was last seen on June 25 in the area of Broadway and Fillmore Avenues in Buffalo.
The sheriff explains there is only one known connection to Chautauqua County, and he believes someone brought her to the wooded area between the time she went missing in June and when she was found.
“She had connections to the Angola area, but I did not read that there was any potential suspect from there,” furthered Quattrone.
The first body is also female, however believed to be decades older.
Sheriff Quattrone was hopeful his department could bring closure to at least one of several decades old cold cases after identifying the remains.
Specifically, he believed the first set of remains could be Patricia Limerhardt who went missing from Westfield in 1976, or Lori Bova who went missing from Lakewood in 1997, or Corey Anderson who was last seen in Jamestown in 2008.
Since reviewing the remains, he says dental records were not those of Bova or Anderson.
“That body was estimated to be decades that it had been in the ground, which could potnetally match with the 1976 dissperance of Patricia Limerhardt, but it could also be further,” explained Quattrone. “Dr. Derkment and his team are conitnuing to anyalize and asses that to hopfully give us a better determination on that.”
As for a timeline in identification, the Sheriff says it could take the Forensic Anthropology Department weeks or even months to find complete a further review. Some of the skeletal remains will also be sent to the State Police Crime Lab in Albany for review.
Just before the discovery was made, the Sheriff and District Attorney launched a special unsolved case division to take a closer look at the open cases in the county.
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