Keith BieryGolick

kbierygolick@enquirer.com

WEST CHESTER TWP. - Ten minutes passed before anyone spoke.

The boys sat in a circle near their snow-covered driveway. Their parents weren't home.

A few minutes earlier, they were hiking in the woods near their backyard. Now, the three young brothers sat a few feet away from a dead woman's skull.

No skin. No blood. Just bone.

No one knew what to do. One of the boys, who noticed the skull's shiny top peaking out of the snow, picked it up like a bowling ball and brought it back to their house.

No one spoke because they were too busy thinking.

Did someone dump it out of a car?

Are there more bodies out there?

It was March 7, 2015. Parker Wilhelm, a teenager, eventually broke the silence.

"What if it's real?"

His brothers answered him with more silence.

"What are we going to do?"

Cole, the youngest boy, didn't want to think about it anymore. He stood up and started running around.

Soon, his brothers joined him and played in the snow like nothing happened.

Another 20 minutes passed before their mother returned. Liza Wilhelm walked into the house with her hands full of groceries. She was on the phone with her daughter.

Parker showed her the skull, which had no lower jaw or teeth. Wilhelm's daughter, still on the phone, told her the situation sounded like the opening of a television show. But it's stranger than that. This is the real-life version of "Stand By Me", except the ending hasn't been written yet.

The family called police after Parker's father, Randy Wilhelm, got home.

"Are you sure it's human?" a police dispatcher asked him.

Randy Wilhelm paused. He knew the answer, but took his time and considered the question again.

He said his family would be relieved if it wasn't.

Could dentures solve the mystery?

Police and other law enforcement officials descended into the woods. Soon, police vehicles lined the Cobbler's Creek subdivision.

As Randy Wilhelm remembers it, seemingly every police officer on duty came to look at the skull.

Then, something happened he will never forget.

Police Lt. Barry Walker, then commander of West Chester's patrol section, pulled up to their house in an SUV. He walked over to the skull, knelt down and started praying.

“For the rest of them, it was really cool,” said Randy Wilhelm. “For him, it was (about how) somebody died here.”

Over the next several days, officials recovered more than 200 bones near Gregory Creek. Butler County Coroner Dr. Lisa Mannix says officials will likely never know how the woman died.

"You have very little to go on," said Mannix.

But that doesn't mean they aren't trying.

From the recovered bones, officials at a forensic lab in Arizona put together a facial reconstruction of what the woman might have looked like.

Investigators know the woman was between 35 and 60 years old. They know she had naturally brown hair with some strands of gray in it. They know she stood about 5 feet 6 inches tall. They know she had expensive and unusual dentures.

Remains found in West Chester have face

More than a year later, they still don't know who she was.

On a police report, her name is VICTIM 15-00761. The coroner's office has another name for her: Jane Doe.

More remains found with skull, ID process continues

Mannix speculated she was not from the area and was likely homeless or staying in the woods for shelter. Officials believe she died in the fall or early winter last year.

Speaking from a conference room in her Hamilton office, Mannix's voice sped up when talking about the progress they've made. The coroner has enlisted the help of a renowned forensic anthropologist and entered data into a national missing-person database run by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The false teeth this woman had are so rare, Mannix says, only 272 dental providers in the country have purchased matching ones.

So she sent a letter at the end of January to all 272 of them. Only 40 providers have responded so far. She is in the process of following up with the others.

In a case without many leads, the teeth may be the best chance at solving her mystery.

'It seems like it was two weeks ago'

If that happens, and the woman is identified, Liza Wilhelm wants her family to have somewhere to go.

She planted flowers where the woman's skeleton was once scattered on a hill. She picked daffodils because they are known to spread.

Eventually, she wants to put a cross where her kids found the skull, which is still marked with a green stick, a few yards away from a rusty refrigerator and empty Pepsi can.

"It would break my heart if she was never identified," Liza Wilhelm said.

That is why she agreed to speak to The Enquirer. She wants to do everything she can to help this woman, who she will never know but always be connected to.

Her boys never had nightmares. But in the days following their discovery, Cole couldn't get the skull out of his head. Parker thought about it every day for several weeks.

"It seems like it was two weeks ago," said Parker.

Cole interrupted and said it feels like it hasn't even been that long. That's because, for the boys, Gregory Creek is a place to escape.

In the summer, Parker and his brothers shoot pellet guns. In the winter, they skate in boots on frozen water.

They still do those things. But it's different now.

Parker thinks about the skull every time he and his brothers go back.

Now, they don't think about the time his brother Caleb got stuck in the mud -- and a friend had to literally shovel him out. They think about death.

A year ago, West Chester police stationed a cruiser near the woods for several days by the family's home. It didn't matter. They slept with their outside lights on.

They don't do that anymore. In fact, they've all been into the woods since then. They know who they are.

They just don't know who she is.

HOW TO HELP:

- Call the Butler County Coroner's Office at 513-785-5860 or email coronertips@butlercountyohio.org.

- Visit the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System website and consider entering information into the database. There are currently about 40,000 unidentified human remains cases in the United States, according to the organization.