From the Chicago Tribune--
Body under house is identified
South Side woman had been missing since '96
By Brett McNeil
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 8, 2003
The body unearthed last week at a Bridgeport demolition site is a
former South Side woman who has not been heard from since 1996,
authorities and the woman's relatives said Sunday.
Barbara Boyd, who would have turned 41 last spring, was living with
her elderly boyfriend and the man's adult son in a house on the 3700
block of South Parnell Avenue when family members last spoke with
Boyd, said her aunt, Dorothy Boyd.
In the years since Boyd disappeared while living with John B. Lakas
and his son, John E. Lakas, Dorothy Boyd said she filed missing person
reports in Illinois and six other states where her peripatetic niece
was known to have traveled during a life of drug abuse.
"I always expected to find her, and probably dead. But never like
this," said Dorothy Boyd, who filed the first of many missing person
reports in November of 1996.
Barbara Boyd grew up in the nearby Canaryville neighborhood. Almost
all of her large extended family, including Dorothy Boyd, has moved to
northern Indiana since her disappearance.
The South Parnell Avenue house was recently bought by a nephew of
Mayor Richard M. Daley and demolished. Last Thursday, a construction
crew digging in what had been the building's crawlspace found Boyd's
body wrapped in a blue tarpaulin.
Officials were able to positively identify Boyd through distinct
physical features, including a set of metal rods surgically implanted
in her legs after a near-fatal 1988 auto accident and several tattoos,
said Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donahue.
Investigators also located Boyd's key chain, bearing her first name,
in the pocket of the pants she was wearing when buried, Dorothy Boyd
said.
On Thursday, police took a DNA sample from Boyd's father, William
Boyd, during a visit to his Knox, Ind. home, but results of the test
to see whether their DNA matched had not been made available to
relatives Sunday.
Donahue said an autopsy did not produce a definitive cause of death.
Records show that Patrick Daley Thompson, a Bridgeport resident who
lives just a few doors away from the discovery site, bought the South
Parnell Avenue house in June from John E. Lakas, who now lives in New
Port Richey, Fla. He declined to comment when contacted at home.
The elder Lakas died in January of 2002 and had not lived in the home
since at least 2000, according to his daughter, Mary Lakas.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0309080135sep08,1,128279...
--
Anne Warfield
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
