1978 Patterson, Leoma 10/20/78, Anderson County 56 YO

[PorchlightUSA]

Bones aren't those of long-missing woman
By BOB FOWLER, fowlerb@knews.com
April 27, 2006


CLINTON - For years, some of Leoma Patterson's children doubted that the few bones resting in a remote grave in Anderson County were those of their mother.
Now, after those bones were exhumed and underwent two rounds of DNA testing, the family's fears have been confirmed.


That's not Leoma Patterson.

A closed case has been reopened, famed forensic anthropologist Dr. William Bass of Knoxville said Wednesday.

A new investigation has been launched, and TBI Agent Steve Vinsant has been assigned to the case, Campbell County District Attorney General Paul Phillips said.

Bass said he is involved in that probe, which will include a re-exhumation of the bones.

Wednesday's announcements deepen a mystery that has hounded Patterson's descendants for years, and new questions have emerged.

Whose bones are those in the grave with Leoma Patterson's name chiseled on the headstone?

What really happened to the Anderson County woman after she went missing in October 1978?

"It's an interesting, interesting case,'' Bass said. "You have the original person who is still missing, and another person who was mistakenly identified and buried in the first person's coffin.''

Patterson, a 56-year-old divorcee who frequented taverns along Clinton Highway, was last seen leaving a bar called Peggy's Place on Oct. 20, 1978.

Children playing on the banks of Norris Lake in Campbell County's Twin Cove area found human skeletal parts on March 12, 1979.

Dogs had scavenged much of the body. Only a section of spine, part of the skull and a shock of hair remained. Authorities immediately thought of the missing Patterson.

Forensic pathologist Cleland Blake conducted all of the then-available scientific tests on the remains, which stayed for years in his Morristown morgue.

"I concluded that it was Leoma Patterson based on ancillary evidence,'' Blake said Wednesday.

A surprise murder confession by Patterson's great-nephew came years after Patterson's disappearance.

In August 1985, Jimmy Ray Maggard, then 26, drove a car stolen from Knoxville into a ditch in front of the Floyd County, Ga., Sheriff's Department.

Maggard confessed to a crime spree that spanned Tennessee and Georgia, including the murders of an Atlanta drug dealer, a Nashville man and Patterson.

Maggard said he killed Patterson over a drug deal gone sour. He is now serving a life sentence in a Georgia prison.

Leoma Patterson's family interred what they believed were her bones in September 1985 in Phillips Cemetery in Anderson County's New River area.

But some of her children, especially Barbara Adkins of Jamestown, remained unconvinced that they had buried what was left of their mother.

"My mother has always thought it wasn't her (Patterson),'' Elizabeth Pendergrass said Wednesday of Adkins.

Adkins hired Livingston, Tenn., attorney Lynda Simmons to look into the case.

Simmons, in turn, enlisted Todd Matthews of Livingston, an amateur sleuth with a history of solving missing-person cases.

They petitioned Anderson County Chancery Court for an exhumation order, signed last summer.

Bass said he was there in August when the family members videotaped the exhumation.

DNA samples from teeth taken from the grave were compared with DNA from a cheek swabbing from a daughter, Matthews said. They didn't match, he said.

Another daughter's DNA was then taken and compared to the teeth, and again, there was no match.

The daughters' DNA samples matched, Matthews said.

"This family would have been better off if this was her,'' Matthews said of the bones.

"Now, they know for a fact that when they take flowers to that grave on Mother's Day that this is not their mother,'' Matthews said.

"But I bet they'll take the flowers anyway.''

Bob Fowler, News Sentinel Anderson County editor, may be reached at 865-4813625.




http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/art...4653514,00.html

[ELL]

Re-exhumation shows bones not Patterson's in 28-year mystery
One thing's for sure

By BOB FOWLER, fowlerb@knews.com
December 3, 2006


BRICEVILLE - Standing in an open grave beside an open casket, Dr. Bill Bass held up a skull.
Family members of a woman missing nearly three decades silently watched.





The re-exhumation Saturday in Anderson County's remote New River area is the latest development in two baffling mysteries:

What happened to Leoma Patterson?

And, whose bones are those that have rested all these years in her grave?

The answer to the first question likely rests with Patterson's confessed murderer, an inveterate liar carrying out a life sentence in Georgia, Patterson's grandson says.

Cutting-edge technology and the media may help solve the second query, says Bass.

Bass, a famed forensic anthropologist, on Saturday retrieved all of the coffin's contents: the skull, jawbone and a handful of ribs and backbones.

In their place went a memory box full of photos of Patterson's children, their children and their children's children.

"I want to see this person identified," Patterson's daughter, Barbara Adkins of Jamestown, said of the bones. "I also want to find out what happened to my mother.

"We're the voice for this person here, and for our mother, too," Adkins said.

Leoma Patterson, a 52-year-old divorcee and mother of seven children, was last seen alive Oct. 20, 1978. Known to frequent Clinton Highway taverns, Patterson left a bar called Peggy's Place that night with two men.

A cluster of bones found by the side of Norris Lake in Campbell County six months later were tentatively identified as Patterson's.

Even then, family members had their doubts. The bones remained for years in a Morristown morgue.

It was only after Patterson's great-nephew, Jimmy R. Maggard, confessed in 1985 to the slaying that the bones were interred in the family cemetery.

"I played with Jimmy Maggard when I was a kid," said Patterson's oldest grandson, Stanley "Junior" Roach of Lake City.

"He was the type of person who believed the lies he told, and he told some doozies," he said.

Roach said Maggard gave authorities several versions of the murder.

"At first, he said he hit my grandmother over the head with a tire iron in a drug deal gone bad," Roach said.

"He said he and a man from Clinton dumped her body on Vowell Mountain (near Lake City)."

Roach said he lived with his grandmother until she went missing when he was 16 and that she didn't do drugs.

Bass on Saturday said there was no trauma to the skull that a tire iron would have caused.

The bones resting in Leoma Patterson's grave were first exhumed in August 2005.

Family members haunted by uncertainties over their mother's fate requested that grave opening.

Two sets of DNA tests were conducted, initially on Patterson's oldest daughter and then on her youngest daughter.

The sisters' DNA matched, but there was no link between their samples and the DNA taken from the bones.

A cold case was reopened, and Campbell County District Attorney General Paul Phillips last April said he assigned TBI Agent Paul Vinsant to the case.

Further tests on the bones were planned. Frustrated by delays, Patterson's family last month obtained a court order for the re-exhumation.

Bass said a University of Tennessee graduate student would use clay to do a facial reconstruction of the skull.

That depiction will be given to area media as part of the search for an identity, Bass said.

Bass said he intends to take measurements of the skull and bones to get a "more accurate estimate of the race, sex and age."

"I also want to make sure the skull and the bones belong to the same person," Bass said. Information about the bones will be entered in national crime computers, he said.

As part of the reopened case, Bass said authorities are expected to interview Maggard.

Now in Johnson State Prison in Wrightsville, Ga., for a 1982 murder in Georgia, Maggard has recanted his confession.

He has also launched a letter-writing crusade, saying there's been a conspiracy and cover-up in the case.

"I pray that all this will be resolved and we will get answers," Roach said just before the casket was reopened Saturday morning.

"Our hope is our loved one, my grandmother, may be found, and we can put her to rest, and this lady's identity will be found, and her family will have peace also."

Bob Fowler, News Sentinel Anderson County editor, may be reached at 865-481-3625.

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/art...5186466,00.html

[PorchlightUSA]

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...?showtopic=2729

[PorchlightUSA]

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/p/patterson_leoma.html

Leoma Patterson


Above: Patterson, circa 1978


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: October 20, 1978 from Anderson County, Tennessee
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date of Birth: June 11, 1926
Age: 52 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Patterson used snuff at the time of her disappearance.


Details of Disappearance

Patterson was last seen at Peggy's Place, a now-defunct bar on Clinton Highway in Anderson County, Tennessee, on October 20, 1978. She left the bar with two men and has never been heard from again. She was reported missing two days later.
In March 1979, skeletal remains were found on the banks of Norris Lake in Campbell County, Tennessee. Testing determined the body was probably Patterson's, and it was buried under her name, but there was some measure of doubt as to the body's identiy. In August 1985, six years later, Jimmy Ray Maggard, who was one of the men who accompanied Patterson on the night of her disappearance, confessed to beating her to death and dumping her body in the same spot where the remains were found. Maggard is currently incarcerated, serving a life sentence for other crimes.

In 2005, however, a new development emerged when two of Patterson's daughters had a DNA test done to make certain the Norris Lake body was their mother's. DNA taken from the teeth of the Norris Lake skeleton did not match either of Patterson's children's samples, so Patterson was re-listed as a missing person. However, shortly afterwards, a forensic anthropologist stated the test had not been conducted properly and additional testing needed to be done.

Patterson was divorced at the time of her disappearance, and had several children. She remains listed as a missing person and the issue of the Norris Lake body is unresolved.



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
615-744-4000



Source Information
The Doe Network
Leoma Patterson
WBIR 10 News
The Knoxville News-Sentinel



Updated 2 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated February 4, 2007; details of disappearance updated.

Charley Project Home


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[PorchlightUSA]

Reconstruction of the still unidentified lady

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Leoma Patterson

The Knoxville News Sentinel

WBIR News

[burnsjl2003]

Bones buried in Patterson's grave are hers, Bass says
By Bob Fowler (Contact)
Thursday, June 28, 2007


A skull and handful of bones exhumed in December from a remote grave in Anderson County’s New River area are indeed those of homicide victim Leoma Patterson.

Forensic anthropologist Dr. William Bass confirmed that finding Wednesday.

The announcement ends a two-year effort to identify the bones that included two grave exhumations, numerous DNA tests and a facial reconstruction.

“We finally pushed the right buttons,’’ Bass said. “It just shows that it takes a lot of people to get the information that you need to make an identification.’’

It took tweaking a former TBI agent’s memory and his retrieval of long-stored evidence — a swath of human hair — to finally close the baffling case.

Bass’ announcement also ends years of uncertainty for Patterson’s seven children, divided over whose bones rested in their mother’s grave.

Questions, however, still linger, said Patterson’s son, Ronald Patterson of Jamestown. “We’re trying to find out the truth,’’ he said. “We’re trying to find out what happened to our mother.’’

Leoma Patterson was a 52-year-old divorcee when she was last seen alive Oct. 20, 1978, leaving Peggy’s Place, a Clinton Highway bar, with two men.

Six months later, children playing next to Norris Lake in Campbell County made a gruesome discovery: a cluster of dog-chewed human bones with some jewelry and a mat of human hair nearby.

Using techniques available at the time, forensic pathologist Dr. Cleland Blake ruled there was enough evidence to conclude that the bones were Leoma Patterson’s.

But with family members unconvinced, the bones remained for years in Blake’s morgue in Morristown.

A great-nephew confessed to the killing in 1985, and the bones were finally interred in the family cemetery in New River.

Some family members continued to express doubts, and the bones were exhumed in August 2005.

An initial battery of DNA tests showed no match between the bones and DNA samples from two of Leoma Patterson’s daughters.

That reopened a cold case, and authorities were alerted. Although they now thought the bones weren’t their mother’s, Leoma Patterson’s children reinterred them.

Frustrated by delays and told they needed more DNA testing, the heirs obtained a court order and re-exhumed the bones last December.

Seven more sophisticated DNA tests followed.

Researchers failed to retrieve any mitochondrial DNA from the bones, said Jon Jefferson, who teams with Bass to write best-selling books based on Bass’ experiences.

Jefferson said he then called Blake’s wife. He learned that Blake in the late 1970s normally simmered human bones “a day or two in water with detergent and bleach’’ to clean them as part of his standard procedure.

That practice, commonplace at the time and before the advent of DNA testing, “is not good for DNA,’’ Jefferson said.

Stymied without a good DNA source from the bones, Jefferson said he recalled that a mat of human hair was discovered at the crime scene.

It was found next to the bones, and it tentatively matched hair on rollers in Leoma Patterson’s house, he said.

Jefferson said he called Claiborne County Sheriff David Ray, who was the TBI agent investigating Leoma Patterson’s death.

“I asked Sheriff Ray enough questions that he got kind of curious,’’ Jefferson said.

Ray had a file on the case at his house, Jefferson said.

“Lo and behold, there was the hair mat,’’ Jefferson said, with the original TBI seals still intact.

That DNA hair sample matched DNA from one of Leoma Patterson’s granddaughters.

The odds are 99.99 percent that the granddaughter and the woman “whose remains we’ve been looking at are of the same maternal lineage,’’ Jefferson said.

“We’re not saying it’s not her,’’ said Leoma Patterson’s son, Ronald Patterson. “But we’ve got a guy in prison who said he beat her in the head with a tire iron and a perfect skull with no fractures.’’

Ronald Patterson said that if family members agree, the bones would be reinterred — for good this time — in the family cemetery.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/jun/28/b...eare-hers-bass/