WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderReed family wants F.B.I. investigation

Reed family wants F.B.I. investigation

By Katie Nilsson

ROCKFORD (WREX) -   After a look from another independent forensic scientist,  Mary Jane Reed's family wants federal investigators to look in to the murder.   Mary Jane and her date Stanley Skridla were killed in Ogle County in 1948.  Their killer has never been found.

You may remember, investigators dug up Mary Jane's body back in 2005 so they could have another look at her bones, and see if her casket held more clues.  After several separate forensic scientists looked at the stuff, the family wants the Ogle County Sheriff to call in the FBI.  "We feel that there are probably still people who have, not first hand knowledge, but have some second hand knowledge and Warren would feel certainly a lot better if his sister was lying in the cemetery out there on Daysville Road and had her head."

Michael Arians says they've gotten reports from about a dozen different forensic anthropologists who say the bones found in Mary Jane's casket that was exhumed in 2005 are from two different people.  He says the sheriff's office botched the exhumation.   That's why he and the family want help from the FBI. "The skull that we obtained from the Ogle County Sheriff's and the Coroners Office was shot through the nose with a .22 caliber bullet.   The report from 1948 stated that Mary Jane was shot in the back of the head with a .32 caliber bullet.

"We took every step that we could during the exhumation and the follow up investigation the detective's report was complete and as through and as unbiased as it could be." says Ogle County Sheriff Greg Bietel.

He says he welcomes help from the FBI, but feels like this is a closed investigation. "The people that we believe, what we believe the probable cause would show that they committed the murders are dead.  Anyone that had any knowledge of who committed the murders is dead. We can't resurrect them."

Arians is asking U-S Senator Dick Durbin to help him bring in the FBI.