Suffolk cops still await clues on 4 bodies

When four sets of skeletal remains were found in Gilgo Beach, authorities could rule out one potential victim, Shannan Gilbert, in less than a week thanks to a lucky break of sorts: a metal implant in her jaw was not found among the bones.

Now, nearly three weeks after the first bones were found wrapped in burlap off Ocean Parkway, Suffolk police said they "have not received any information" from forensic pathologists about several crucial missing clues - identifications, causes and manner of death, and the ages and races of the victims.

The wait for answers is not unusual, said forensic experts not involved in the case, especially if investigators are relying on matching DNA extracted from the bones with more than 10,000 samples of missing persons and their relatives, or among 8 million samples in a national database of convicts.

"We can't do it in 38 minutes plus commercials, like they do on these TV shows like 'CSI,' " said Arthur Eisenberg, co-director of the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, one of nine laboratories nationally equipped to access national DNA databases.

In fact, experts said, connecting the bones to a missing person could take months because the computer algorithms are so complex and the demands on time for the searches so great.

"They've got their work cut out for them," said Mike Murphy, coroner of Clark County, Nev. "A normal wait for us, it's about two months."

Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, was surprised that police said the victims' ages were still unknown. The city's forensic anthropologists - a special team brought in on the case - "should in a few hours be able to figure that out," Baden said. "Of course, if you're not certain, and you want to send it out for consultations; that could take forever. Or the police may not want to release it."

A spokeswoman for the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner - one of a handful that runs its own DNA searches - did not respond to phone and e-mail messages.

Police have said DNA samples from the remains will be analyzed in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

Because police are investigating the deaths as possible serial murders, Baden said the case would get top priority in queues for FBI database searches. "With a serial murderer, the longer you wait, the more potential you have for more murders to happen," he said.

The Gilgo Beach remains could pose significant challenges, experts said, because they were lying on a windswept area east of Jones Beach off the Atlantic Ocean, an environment that hastens decomposition.

Normally, quick identifications of human remains are made through dental records, experts said. If the remains are in good enough condition, sometimes fingerprints yield a match.

But DNA matches can take longer. The samples would probably first be run through a database of DNA samples given by relatives of missing people maintained by the city medical examiner, Eisenberg said. A computer program can take a few days to two weeks to check for similarities over millions of genes on thousands of samples.

It would then be checked against CODIS, a hunt through millions of samples that Eisenberg said "could add weeks or months" to the probe.