CU professors get OK to exhume mystery 1879 remains

A Kansas judge told two University of Colorado professors on Friday that they can exhume a 127-year-old cadaver to, perhaps, determine its true identity. CU law professor Mimi Wesson and anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven were present at the brief hearing in Lawrence. "We're elated," Wesson said. "We were geared up for a hammer-and-tong fight. And we're laughing because it was so anti-climactic." Their petition was unopposed, although it represented new legal terrain for most of the participants.

"We have never fielded a request like this before, under these precise circumstances," said Toni Wheeler, staff attorney for the city of Lawrence.
Grave Site 555 in Section 4 of the city-owned Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence is officially identified as belonging to John Wesley Hill-mon. Hillmon, an aspiring rancher and cattleman, reportedly died March 17, 1879, at age 31 in an accidental shooting near Crooked Creek - now known as Spring Creek - outside Medicine Lodge, Kan.

But historians and legal scholars have debated the point for years because the insurance companies that carried policies on Hill-mon fought the claim of Hillmon's widow, Sallie. The companies insisted the grave actually holds the remains of an Iowan named Frederick Adolph Walters.

That dispute, known to legal scholars as Mutual Life Insurance Co. vs. Hillmon, sparked six trials and two U.S. Supreme Court rulings - including an 1882 Supreme Court decision that gave birth to a key piece of federal evidence law.

Wesson hopes the dig can be conducted in mid-May and that Van Gerven can quickly determine with certainty who really is in the Hillmon grave.

Douglas County District Court Judge Paula Martin ruled Friday that the Hillmon/Walters remains can be out of the ground for no more than 48 hours.

Whether Van Gerven is successful in making a positive identification will depend, in part, on the condition of what is found in the grave.

"Dennis said to me, 'If we don't find very much, I won't need 48 minutes. But otherwise, I won't be sleeping very much for 48 hours,' " Wesson said.

Van Gerven, noted for his studies involving health and disease in ancient populations of the Nile Valley, expects to focus on comparisons between the cadaver's skull structure and surviving photographs of both Hillmon and Walters.

He hopes to use laboratory facilities of a colleague at the University of Kansas to complete his work.

Hillmon reportedly was the victim of an accidental shooting at the hands of a traveling companion who said his rifle went off as he unloaded the pair's wagon.

Someone attired in Hillmon's clothes was promptly buried at Medicine Lodge. Hillmon's widow held three life insurance policies on her husband totaling $25,000, and the insurance companies suspected a scheme was afoot to defraud them.

Four of the six trials in Hill-mon's case over the next 20 years resulted in mistrials. Two yielded verdicts in Sallie Hillmon's favor, but those were subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court.