Attempt to ID corpse in Kansas grave fails

CU researcher hoped to unravel mystery of 1800s insurance case

Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, October 16, 2006

The true identity of the man buried 127 years ago in a Kansas grave bearing the name John Wesley Hillmon may be forever lost to history.

University of Colorado law professor Mimi Wesson is conceding that efforts to extract DNA from a shoulder bone fragment recovered during a May 19 exhumation in Lawrence, Kan., have not been successful.

As a result, researchers may never be able to say with certainty whether Hillmon was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery - as Wesson believes - or whether it was another man who many historians and legal scholars think was killed and buried as part of a $25,000 life insurance scam.

"It's sort of discouraging news," said Wesson, who has devoted several years to exploring the Hillmon saga. "I don't think we're going to be able to learn anything from that bone."

Hillmon was reported to have been accidentally shot and killed by companion John Brown on March 17, 1879, at their campsite at Crooked Creek - now known as Spring Creek - near Medicine Lodge, and buried there following an inquest.

But when his widow, Sallie Hill-mon, sought to collect on three insurance policies totaling $25,000, those companies cried foul. They soon alleged the Hillmons and Brown had conspired to kill another man, Frederick Adolph Walters, and bury him in Hillmon's clothes.

The allegations triggered two more inquests and an epic 20-year legal battle, which included six trials and a pair of challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case also gave birth to what lawyers know as the state-of-mind exception to the hearsay rule, which endures as an important piece of federal evidence law today.

The case was ultimately settled on the eve of a scheduled seventh trial, with the money paid to Sallie Hillmon going mostly to her lawyers.

Wesson has become convinced the body in the unmarked Kansas grave really is Hillmon, and that the Walters solution was the insurance companies' duplicitous effort to dodge paying Sallie Hillmon's claim.

Just prior to the May 19 exhumation in Kansas, Wesson established contact with a previously unknown Hillmon family descendant, Leray Hillmon, of Stevensville, Mont. He attended the exhumation and volunteered his own DNA for comparison, in the event that DNA could be successfully recovered from bones in the gravesite.

Forty-seven bone fragments were found that day - the coffin had long since disintegrated in an underground streamlet - and the largest, a fragment of shoulder bone, was brought back to Boulder.

But Wesson said DNA could not be retrieved because the bones were submerged in water for a long period of time, and because of the presence of single-celled organisms that consume human DNA.

The genetic work has been performed by CU biologist Kenneth Krauter, in CU's Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.

CU anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven, who led the Hill-mon exhumation for Wesson, said Krauter told him earlier this week he isn't quite ready to give up on the shoulder bone.

"He said, 'I've still got a couple of things I want to do,' " said Van Gerven. "So, while the baby is clearly on life-support, it's not time to do the last rites."

What's involved

What it cost

• The Hillmon project was funded by a $5,000 grant from the University of Colorado School of Law and another $5,000 from CU's Division of Continuing Education Outreach program. Because much of the work was donated, only about half has been spent.

What now

• A CU molecular biologist is continuing his efforts to extract DNA from a shoulder bone fragment. Also, anthropologist Dennis Van Gerven plans to pursue digital comparisons of historic photos of Hillmon and Walters with the cadaver in the grave.