A 1968 lacking particular person’s case has after all been put to relaxation after government had been ready to undoubtedly establish remains that had been came upon just about 40 years ago at a seaside in St. Augustine, Florida.
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office introduced final week that remains found in a shallow grave on Crescent Beach in 1985 had been undoubtedly identified as Mary Alice Pultz, a woman who went lacking just about twenty years previous to the stay’s discovery.
“This investigation is an impressive instance that we can by no means surrender,” said St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick. “The mixture of extremely professional detectives and complicated DNA era has given Mary Alice’s circle of relatives some solutions about her disappearance with regards to 40 years ago.”
Pultz was born in Rockville, Maryland, and was 25-years-old when she was last seen by her family. She became estranged with her family after leaving home with her boyfriend at the time, a man named John Thomas Fugitt.
Fugitt, who also went by an alias Billy Joe Wallace, was convicted in the 1981 murder of his male roommate in Georgia. Though he was sentenced to death, he died in prison before he could be executed, according to the sheriff’s office.
Exactly how Pultz died remains unclear but detectives are investigating her death as a homicide and named Fugitt as a person of interest in the case.
The skeletal remains were found by construction workers who were digging at Crescent Beach on April 10, 1985, and the victim was believed to be a white woman between the age of 30 and 50. But it wasn’t possible to identify her at the time.
In 2011, some of the remains were sent to the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science at the University of South Florida. Experts there created a facial reconstruction of the victim in the hopes it may lead to some tips but nothing came to fruition.
Then in 2023, the sheriff’s office said detectives partnered with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on the case. A decision was made to send the remains to a private lab in Texas, which extracted DNA from the remains and created a DNA profile.
That profile then led genealogists to Pultz’s living relatives, who agreed to provide DNA samples to match against the profile.
Pultz’s remains were examined by medical examiner Dr. Wendolyn Sneed, according to the sheriff’s office. Sneed observed multiple injuries, including fractures of the nasal bones, multiple ribs, and on the lower legs. Some of those fractured were healed, and additionally there were three surgical burr holes drilled into Pultz’s skull.
Burr holes are used by surgeons, according to John Hopkins Medicine, to relieve pressure on the skull due to a build up in fluid. Among the most common reasons to use burr holes is to relieve pressure from a subdural hematoma, or brain bleed, that can occur after a head injury.
Interviews with Pultz’s family indicated that the burr holes were likely done after her disappearance from their lives in 1968, according to the sheriff’s office press release.
“Dr. Sneed steered those accidents, in addition to the surgical burr holes, are indicative of critical trauma that may have required hospitalization such as being concerned in a automobile crash or being struck through a automobile,” the discharge stated.
