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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
453 Posts |
 Posted - 04 September 2003 : 16:13:15
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Though retired, agent remains unofficially involved in the case
By Kurt Van der Dussen ,
Herald-Times Staff Writer
MARTINSVILLE - For so long, Gary Dunn was sure Jill Behrman was in Salt Creek.
For the recently retired three-decade FBI agent, as well as for Bloomington police detective Marty Deckard, the long-standing theory was that the 19-year-old Behrman had been struck by a vehicle while riding her bike south of Bloomington on May 31, 2000, after which the injured cyclist was wrapped in plastic sheeting and transported to the creek, where she was stabbed to death and dumped in.
That theory led to the huge effort last September to drain 1 1/2 miles of the creek between two temporary stone and earthen dams and search it for Behrman's remains and other evidence.
And Dunn and Deckard have reported from that search to the present that while they failed to recover Behrman or any part of her body, they did find significant evidence that they believed confirmed their theory. They won't confirm it, but reports indicate the evidence included the alleged murder knife and the plastic.
On Thursday, that hypothesis appeared to come crashing down when dental records showed that a scattered skeleton found near Paragon more than 20 miles away from Salt Creek was Behrman's - though investigators still won't call the creek theory totally invalid or discarded.
As it was, Dunn and Deckard were the ones who told Eric and Marilyn Behrman at 2:30 p.m. Thursday that their daughter had been found.
"As you might imagine, it was a very emotional meeting," Dunn said later at a law enforcement news conference at the Morgan County Courthouse in Martinsville.
Asked if he had been shocked or stunned by the discovery of Behrman's
skeleton other than where he thought she was, he replied that with
investigations, one learns never to be much surprised by anything.
But he also made clear that Salt Creek was far from the only place that was searched.
"We've conducted literally dozens of searches," he said. "We've searched in quarries, cornfields, houses, rural areas, as well as Salt Creek."
He anticipated and answered the logical next question.
"Would we do it again? Absolutely," he said of the costly creek search. And he maintained evidence from that search still could tie into the investigation.
As for the continuing nature of that investigation, he said that "we're not going to eliminate anything."
During the course of the Behrman investigation, law enforcement officials received all sorts of calls, tips, even a few "confessions." Dunn said they came from everyone from "psychics" to "drug people."
"We never take anyone at their word," he said after the press conference, noting that such tips or accounts were double- and triple-checked. "I personally talked to more than a thousand people," he said of the 2 1/2-year FBI investigation.
Dunn, who remains unofficially involved in the case despite retiring from the FBI and taking an administrative position at Ivy Tech State College, said investigators still are eager to hear from people who might know something about the case.
"There's still people out there who have information who have not come
forward," he said.
Shy
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For FBI agent Dunn, nothing is a surprise
