We are called to a drowning. A snowmobile with two riders has gone through the ice. We dive in and find the snowmobile but no bodies. The sheriff contacts Sandra Anderson, a famous woman known for finding bones and bodies in water. This is my first contact with the Bone Lady.
Sandra brings her dog that can smell dead bodies in the water. She says her dog can smell the gasses emitted by dead bodies, even in water. After a couple of hours she announces, “The dog is indicating the bodies are not out there.”
“How can you tell?” I ask.
She says, “Well, I can tell by the way the dog acts.”
A week later one of the bodies shows up—only about 150 feet from where we were searching. This is my first red flag that something is wrong with the Bone Lady.
My next contact with her is in regards to a woman, Cherita Thomas, who had been missing since 1980. We believe she is a homicide victim.
Detective McGregor and Dave Marthaler (FBI) take Sandra in the woods to search for Cherita’s remains. The first time they search the woods, nothing is found. They take Sandra to the same area a second time, and they start finding bones. I photograph the bones and e-mail the photos to a forensic anthropologist. He says they are animal bones.
I recall Sandra telling me that her dog would never hit on animal bones. Another red flag is raised.
I start to get bad vibes about the Bone Lady. She always wants to return to a site . . . she never finds bones the first time, only on the second or third visit. And, these are areas that have already been thoroughly checked.
By this time, the crime team has discussed other missing people with Sandra. We have provided all kinds of information to her, and she continues to return to the same areas where she’s already been.
Miraculously, we start to find human bones. We even bring in the FBI Recovery Team on one of the searches.
We are on a suspected location and the dog is marking areas. To indicate the location of a bone, the dog puts its nose to the ground and then lies down. Sandra sticks a flag in the ground wherever the dog does this. We start searching the flagged areas. Several of us are down on our knees in one area, when the Bone Lady says, “The dog is indicating there is a bone over there.”
“Where? Where is he indicating?” I ask.
She says, “Over there. Right where he’s at . . .”
I look again. “We’ve already looked over there. There’s nothing there. Where do you mean?”
And she says, “Right there. The dog is sitting on it.”
“How can you tell the dog is sitting on a bone?!”
“I can just tell. He’s sitting on it. Reach underneath and grab the bone!”
I thought, Yeah, right. I’m going to reach under the dog and find a bone . . . this is a joke!
She sees the look on my face and says, “I’m serious!” She moves the dog up and low and behold, the dog was sitting on a bone!
The anthropologist on the scene determines it is a finger bone. “Yeah, it’s definitely human,” he says. Then he sticks it up to his nose and says, “Smell this.”
I look at him incredulously as I think, Right, the dog’s ass was just on it and now you want me to smell this bone . . .
He says, “Seriously, tell me what it smells like.”
I put it under my nose and sniff. “Smells like chlorine bleach.”
“I was thinking more like ammonia, but yeah, bleach or ammonia,” he says.
“Why would this bone smell like ammonia or bleach after all these years?” I ask.
We discuss the possibilities. The best reason we can surmise is that the murderer poured chlorine bleach or ammonia on the body when it was decomposing to get rid of the smell. We search further and find more human bones.
Meanwhile, we are still searching for Cherita Thomas. John Lucy and Jenny Patchin from the crime lab have joined us. The Bone Lady is here too. On one of our previous searches, Sandra was told about two hunters in a white Ford Bronco who have been missing since 1969. Well, she confused Oscoda County where that case happened with Oscoda, Michigan, which is far away in Iosco County. One of the finger bones she discovered on this search was wrapped in camouflage material—as if there was still flesh on it. It seemed to me as if Sandra was finding evidence for every crime we told her about in this one area, like it was a mass dumping ground for bodies in Iosco County.
Anyway, everybody on the team believes the bones Sandra finds are real. They are excited about the discoveries; I am getting strong feelings the whole time that something just isn’t right.
Sandra marked areas in a nearby stream a year ago. As we are walking along, the dog hits on something in the stream. Sandra sticks flags in the water and says, “Let’s come back to this. Let’s go search another area first, then we’ll come back here.”
“Whatever,” I say, although I think it is odd.
We follow Sandra and the dog to some other areas. She wants to look at what she calls coyote dens. She thinks coyotes drag body bones to their dens. In the bank of the streams where muskrats live—that is what she thinks is a coyote den.
Underneath a stump someone finds a broken bone. Everybody gets excited, “Hey, man, look we found an arm bone!” The anthropologist confirms it is an arm bone.
Sandra then announces, “Well, I’m going to go back down to the creek.” She meant where she had earlier planted the flags in the water. Realize, John, Jenny, Sergeant McGregor, and myself have already sifted this area with screens—right down to the hard bottom of the stream. They removed the muck, etc. and did not find anything.
I decide to accompany Sandra to the stream. She kneels down in the water and says, “It’s gotta be right here, gotta be right here. The dog says it’s by my foot, dog says it’s by my foot . . .” I see her hand go to the back of her leg. “It’s gotta be by my foot.”
Jokingly, I grab her foot in the water and say, “Hey! I got a WHOLE foot!”
“No, no, seriously,” she says, “it’s gotta be right down here by my foot.” I take my hand off her foot, and sure enough, there is a bone right by her foot.
The bone looks really old and brown. “Oh, you’re so good!” she says. “You’re always finding bones! Now, let’s check this other area where the dogs say there’s something.” She kneels down in the water and starts searching.
As I watch Sandra in the water, I realize she always wears leg warmers with her boots untied halfway down. There is usually a lot of bulk on top of boots. Sandra says, “It’s gotta be right down by my foot, the dog is saying something’s here.” So I reach in and, sure enough, there’s another bone.
“Boy, these things look like they’re one hundred years old!” I say.
“Maybe you found an Indian burial ground or something,” she suggests.
I’m thinking, No, this is too coincidental . . . two times in the stream . . . in areas that have already been sifted . . . just her and me . . . no . . . something’s wrong . . . it’s all just too coincidental. Of course, I don’t say anything. After all, she is famous. She’s known worldwide for her work. I don’t feel like I know enough yet to question what she is doing, but I do have a sick feeling in my head and heart.
All of us are at the “coyote den”—the Bone Lady, Dave, Allen, and me. Sandra starts poking a stick in an overturned tree and says, “The dog indicates something’s underneath there, something’s underneath here. It’s gotta be here . . . gotta be right here.”
So, I get down on my hands and knees and start crawling into this hole. “Geez,” I joke, “I’m going to get my ass bit by some muskrat!”
“Oh no,” she says, “the dog says something’s there.”
The hole is like crawling under a desk. It’s a smooth sandy area where the water washed up from the creek. It’s all clean sand. There is nothing there. I come out of there laughing. “Hey, there’s nothing here.”
“Hmm,” she says. “Dog is tired, better go. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
Dave and Allen go back up the bank. I start to follow, then turn around. There’s Sandra on her hands and knees, and she says, “My boot came untied . . . hey, I see a bone!”
“What do you mean you see a bone?” I say in disbelief. Of course, everybody turns around and comes back.
She points, “It’s right there! I can’t reach it though!” The hole is about an arm’s length away. I get on my knees and there, where there was nothing before, is a bone sticking out of the sand. I know that bone was not there ten minutes ago. Now, I really am sick. I know Sandra is planting bones at this crime scene. I don’t know who to talk to about this.
Sandra gives me a hug and says, “You’re so good … you find all these bones!” I think to myself, Yeah because you just put it there!
We leave and call it a night. All the other guys are saying, “This is great! We’re finding human bones! How exciting!”
I go home thinking, How am I going to say anything when they’re all so excited? She’s a famous lady, and I don’t have proof—but I know I’m right. I ask God, “Please, make this easy for me. Please, help me figure this out.”
The next morning before we return to the scene, Jenny and John come to me. Jenny says, “Do you think we missed anything when we originally searched that stump and found only beaver chips and stuff like that?”
“Not unless it was something so small you couldn’t see it,” I answered.
Jenny shook her head. “No, I’m asking do you think we missed anything like this?” She pulls out a piece of fibrous carpet material about two inches by one inch. “Do you think we missed that?”
“NO WAY! No way,” I say.
“Sandra went back to the stump and said we missed this.” God has answered my prayers. I am no longer alone in my suspicions.
“Let me tell you what I think is going on,” I say. I tell them all my suspicions and end by saying, “I think she’s got to be carrying bones in the back of her pant leg, in her bunched up leg warmers. I think Sandra is actually physically planting the stuff.”
We decide we’re not letting Sandra out of our sight. One of us will stay with her at all times—no matter what—all day long.
Unfortunately, Sandra manages to walk off with Al and Dave. They are headed to the other coyote dens with the dog. Damn, now she’s out wandering around and none of us are with her! Sandra “finds” a piece of bone that allegedly has feces on it, which the anthropologist from Michigan State University is able to match with one of the other bones.
Sandra now wants to return to the stream because the dog has alerted her. Jenny says, “I’m going with you.” The two of them go off together. Detective McGregor is at the creek too.
Sandy kneels down in the water and starts feeling around. Jenny is watching. She sees Sandy’s hand go behind her leg and reach at the back of her boot.
Sandy says, “Oh, I got the bone right here …”
But Jenny grabs Sandy’s hand before it can touch the bottom and says, “Yeah, because you just put it there.” The two women get into a tug a war over the bone! Sandra tries to throw it back in the water. Imagine that! A bone that she just found—and she wants to throw it in the water?! Well, McGregor is trying to figure out what’s going on. He grabs the bone, and that’s when Jenny and I tell him, “She’s planting the bones.”
I was relieved that with the help of God, Jenny and I connected that morning. Otherwise the charade would have lasted much longer.
Eventually, it was found that the bones were from Louisiana State University’s medical department. A captain in the fire department, who was training cadaver dogs, was allowed to have the bones and he was supplying them to Sandy. Some of those bones ended up on our scene.
The FBI charged Sandra with ten counts; she pled to five. Some people have appealed their cases based on her finding some of the evidence that convicted them, but the evidence she found was just one small piece to the puzzle in each case. She would “find” the piece that investigators thought they still needed.
Currently, she is lodged in federal prison.