Remains In Vernon Not From Three Missing Girls

There are still few answers about the skeletal remains found in a Vernon neighborhood in March. At a police news conference in Vernon on Tuesday, police said the bones did not belong to three young girls that went missing in the area decades ago.

Chief Medical Examiner Wayne Carver said the bones, which were discovered in what used to be the old Rockville town dump, are from a female of European descent, most likely somewhere between her 20s and 40s.

Police say a check of the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, was negative for a match. Therefore, the identity of the person whose remains were found is still unknown.

“Through these DNA tests, criminalists from the Connecticut Forensic Lab were able to positively rule out that the recovered remains belong to the three locally missing girls: Lisa White, Janice Pockett or Debra Spickler,” said Vernon Police Lt. William Meier.

Lisa White, of Vernon, was 13 when she was last seen in November of 1974. Janice Pockett, a 7-year-old from Tolland, vanished in July of 1973. And Debra Spickler, a 13-year-old from Mystic, disappeared from a Vernon park in July of 1968.