The Skeleton Key Chronicles

9 hours ago

Last Saturday morning, 53-year-old Antoinette Forbes was on FaceTime with her sister. They were laughing, talking about their weekend and making plans to visit their mother in Florida over Christmas.

Antoinette had last been seen in person the afternoon before, Friday, September 4th, around 3 p.m. near her home on Nebraska Avenue in Northwest Washington, D.C. But her sister talked to her the next morning, and everything seemed completely normal.
Then nobody could get ahold of her.

By Monday, friends who lived nearby went over to Antoinette's house to check on her. The front door was unlocked. Her car was sitting in the driveway. Her wallet and laptop were inside, along with both of her phones, including the one she used for work. Her dog, Max, was there too.

But there was no sign of Antoinette. And we're talking about a woman with a whole life firmly planted in Washington. She is a successful public affairs executive with Eli Lilly and the single mother of a 10-year-old son. Her sister says her son is her world.

D.C. police have now classified Antoinette as critically missing. Her sister says investigators are treating the house as an active crime scene, and the family hasn't been allowed back inside.
Six days ago, Antoinette was laughing with her sister and talking about Christmas. Today, no one seems to know where she is or what happened after that call.
Antoinette Forbes is still missing.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

15 hours ago

After the World Trade Center fell on September 11th, 2001, recovery at Ground Zero became one of the largest forensic efforts in U.S. history.

Thousands of personal belongings were recovered along the way. Items like shoes, watches, wallets, office IDs, photographs and keys. Teams carefully logged and preserved what they found. Some belongings were eventually returned to families, while others became part of collections preserving the history of that day. The 9/11 Memorial Museum alone now holds more than 82,000 artifacts.

But another part of the recovery effort has continued for nearly 25 years. Scientists with New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner are still working to identify people lost at the World Trade Center through DNA. Of the 2,753 people who lost their lives there, 1,654 have now been identified. More than 1,000 still have not been individually identified through material recovered from the site.

As DNA technology has improved through the years, scientists have been able to retest material that couldn't produce a usable DNA profile the first time around. In some cases, samples that offered few answers twenty years ago can now be re-analyzed using methods that simply didn't exist when the identification effort began.

Just last month, for the first time in the World Trade Center identification project, scientists used forensic investigative genetic genealogy to make an identification using the combination of DNA analysis and family-tree research that has helped put names to unidentified people in cold cases across the country.

Using that method, they were able to identify a woman who had remained unknown for more than two decades. Her family chose to keep her name private, but she became the 1,654th person identified through the continuing World Trade Center effort. And the work isn't finished.

25 years later, more than a thousand identities are still waiting to be resolved. With genetic genealogy now part of the effort, surely there will be many more answers still to come.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

1 day ago

Imagine lying down for an afternoon nap and having a rock from outer space come through your roof. That actually happened to Ann Hodges.

On November 30th, 1954, the 34-year-old Alabama woman was asleep on her couch when a meteorite came through the roof of her home, hit a large wooden console radio, ricocheted across the room and bounced off of Ann, leaving an enormous bruise along one side of her body. And somehow, that was only the beginning of the story.

Word spread fast. Police came to the house, reporters and curious onlookers began showing up, and of course, everyone wanted to know exactly what this thing was. The rock was turned over to authorities, and the Air Force eventually took possession of it so experts could examine it and make everything official. Sure enough, the thing that had just come through Ann Hodges’ roof and bounced off of her really was a meteorite.

Then came another problem. Ann and her husband rented the house, and their landlady, Birdie Guy, claimed that because the meteorite had landed on her property, it belonged to her. The dispute dragged on until the two sides eventually settled and Ann kept the meteorite. By then, however, much of the excitement surrounding it had faded. The Hodges had once hoped the meteorite might be worth something, but nothing ever really came of it. For a time, the famous chunk of space rock apparently served as a doorstop.

Meanwhile, another piece of the very same meteorite was discovered nearby the following day. And in a rather ironic twist, the man who found that fragment actually did manage to make some money from his.

Ann eventually donated her piece to the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where it remains today. The museum also has the old Philco radio it struck before ricocheting into her.

More than 70 years later, Ann Hodges still holds a distinction no one else has managed to claim. She remains the only confirmed person in recorded history to have been directly struck by a meteorite.

Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges
February 10, 1920 ~ September 10, 1972

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