By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

PERRY TWP. - The search for clues about Carrie Culberson's disappearance has shifted from a messy, mud-filled pit in rural Brown County to a sterile, high-tech laboratory 50 miles away.

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Seven possible pieces of the puzzle, unearthed from the 15-foot-deep pit during a two-week excavation and search, are being analyzed by forensic experts at the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

There, scientists are beginning an exacting, time-consuming process to find the tiniest traces of evidence that might help solve the 8-year-old mystery of what happened to Culberson.

Scientists will compare their findings to known DNA samples from Culberson and from Vincent Doan, the man convicted of killing her even though her body has never been found.

"In this case we didn't have a body - and we still don't," said Ken Betz, the crime lab's director. "That's one of the things that makes this case so unusual."

In the past 35 years, the crime lab has handled evidence from about 2,450 homicides - and only two of them besides Culberson's resulted in convictions without the victim's body or remains being found, Betz said.

"Without a body, you're always wondering ... and in the back of your mind, you might be saying: Are they really gone?" Betz said. "Family members want to know the truth - period. No matter what it is, they want to know the truth."

While declining to discuss specifics of the Culberson case, Betz said years-old cases bring potential for great rewards or disappointments. Changes in science, specifically advances in DNA testing, can allow scientists to extract evidence they would not have been able to eight years ago, he said. But time and environmental changes can also alter or destroy potential evidence.

Culberson's mother, Debbie, kept a vigil at the Brown County excavation, hoping investigators would find her daughter's remains there. Absent that, she said she is glad they found items to be tested.

"I'm hoping that they'll be able to find some DNA evidence after all this time," she said.

Painstaking process

Authorities have declined to describe six of the objects sent to the crime lab. But one was a distinctive piece of clothing that Culberson's relatives recognized as belonging to her.

"That alone shows that the leads that they had received were viable leads," Culberson's mother said.

The items will be tested for possible DNA, bodily fluids, fibers or any other particles that may hold a clue.

"We're going to analyze everything we have for any type of trace evidence that could be there: blood or hairs or sweat or semen or anything of a biological nature," Betz said.

The testing is getting high priority. But Betz said it still will take at least a week to complete a report. DNA analysis is far more complex and takes much longer than popular TV crime shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation portray.

"Television solves crimes in an hour or 45-minute segment - and that's just unrealistic in the real world of forensics," Betz said. "If I started a single DNA case today and did my analysis and review - and that was my whole job - it would take about four days to finish it."

Annette Davis, a DNA analyst at the crime lab, offered a simplified description of the process:

Using ultraviolet or other special lighting if needed, scientists locate stains on material.

Stains are tested to determine whether they might contain DNA. If so, a scientist cuts out a piece of the stained material and puts it into a test tube with chemicals that separate the DNA from the material. Then the scientist passes the DNA through a filter to remove any foreign material, leaving a purified DNA sample.

Other technical steps follow. Finally, the samples go into tiny test tubes - smaller than marbles - and into a machine that prints a graph showing the unique pattern of that DNA sample.

The results are subject to another scientist's review. Then the results will be compared against other known samples - in this case, Culberson's and Doan's - or fed into a national database to search for a match against 1.5 million other DNA samples.

Although any evidence relating to Culberson's disappearance or death would date back eight years, sometimes luck helps preserve evidence that might otherwise have degraded to the point where it wouldn't be usable, Betz said. For example, if a piece of clothing was balled-up, microscopic evidence may have been preserved from the elements, he said.

But Betz couldn't say whether that is the case for the items found at the Culberson search site.

"I'm not convinced that what I have, because of the condition it was found in, will render anything," he said last week.

And even if the articles sent to lab yield useful samples, Betz says there's another pressing question: "Do the items they collected have a bearing on her death or not?"

Cadaver dogs and difficult dig

Reaching the seven items now at the lab was a feat in itself, said Beth Murray, a College of Mount St. Joseph scientist who is consulting on the case.

Brown County Sheriff's deputies, FBI evidence technicians and others dug into stubborn, clay-based soil - the No. 1 enemy during the search for Culberson's remains, said Murray. The heavy, sticky soil held water, which had to be pumped out, during the rainy days of the dig and made the dig labor-intensive, she said.

As a forensic anthropologist who studies human bones, Murray is specially trained in techniques for recovering buried artifacts without damaging them.

To begin their search, authorities in Brown County used dogs trained to sniff for cadaver scents.

Then they followed a trail of disturbed soil, which is standard in such cases, Murray said.

"You can never put dirt back the way it was when it was undisturbed; things will be jumbled up," she said. "You chase those areas of disturbance in whatever direction that disturbance leads you."

Murray is being asked to scrutinize buckets filled with soil from the site for bone fragments, in case Culberson's remains were pulverized, said Brown County Sheriff's Chief Deputy John Dunn.

Murray said the heavy clay soil will make her task more difficult. Archaeologists often use screens to sift through dirt that could contain human remains or artifacts. That is impossible with clay soil, Murray said.

"It's like trying to screen chewing gum," she said.

Although no obvious human remains surfaced from the Brown County site, Murray said human bones could last eight years.

They would be better preserved if a body had been wrapped in plastic or buried in alkaline soil, but even in acidic soil some remains could last.

Culberson's mother is still hopeful that someone, who has kept a secret about what happened to her daughter, will come forward.

"Please help us find Carrie," Debbie Culberson said as the search ended May 11. "Somebody knows - and we need to know."

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com