Police identify bones found at car wash
Jason...@virgin.net
Police identify bones found at car wash
by Jules Crittenden
Saturday, February 27, 1999
A girl who lay nameless in a shallow grave by a
Chelmsford car wash
for nearly 10 years was identified yesterday as Nancy
Ann Lackey
Launt, a 17-year-old adoptee who went looking for her
birth family
and met with an unknown horror.
Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley made a plea
yesterday for
information that may solve the mystery of the girl's
death.
Although her uncle, Richard Lackey, and brother, Paul
Lackey, worked
at the car wash at the time she disappeared, they have
spoken with
police and are not currently being treated as
suspects, Coakley said.
``We have spoken to them and they understand that this
investigation is ongoing,'' Coakley said. ``We are so
early into this
investigation that no one is ruled in or ruled out.''
``We're hoping there are other people in the area who
have
information that could be helpful,'' Coakley said.
``She was living at
74 Wilson St. in Billerica at the time, but the
sequence of events,
who saw her last, is hazy at this time.''
Launt's life was marked by problems early on, when she
and several
siblings were taken from her parents by the state when
she was a
toddler. She was adopted by the Launt family, now of
Maryland, and
had no contact with her birth family until she was in
her teens, when
she met a birth brother and then learned where her
birth mother was,
Coakley said.
At age 17, in June 1989, Launt abruptly left home and
her adoptive
parents filed a missing persons report. She is
believed to have
appeared at the Billerica home of her birth mother,
Marie Lackey, in
December of that year. But the last contact anyone had
with her was
about January of 1990, until a car wash worker spotted
a bone
protruding from the ground last October.
The facts as they are known leave only questions,
Coakley said.
The cause of death could not be determined from the
skeletal
remains, which showed no signs of violent trauma, she
said.
Questions remain about what her birth family's
involvement might
have been. Her uncle and her brother both worked off
and on over a
10-year period at the car wash and moved to Kentucky
in the early
1990s, but Coakley stressed that the Lackeys are not
suspects.
She noted that it is possible someone else at the car
wash may be
responsible, or that someone could have buried the
girl there under 10
inches of dirt knowing that it would throw suspicion
on the family.
She said the Lackeys have spoken with police several
times in recent
months, claiming ignorance of what happened to Launt.
Efforts to
reach the Launt family and the Lackeys yesterday were
unsuccessful.