Human remains that were found in a Virginia landfill in 1986 were identified this week as a woman who may have ties to a local area.
Chesterfield County Police announced on Wednesday the remains belong to Christy Lynn Floyd, who was 16 and living in Richmond when she disappeared.
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Investigators released several pictures of Floyd on Wednesday, including a photo of Floyd with a male whose identity is unknown. Anyone with information regarding this investigation, including the identity of the unknown male, is asked to contact the Chesterfield County Unsolved/Major Investigations Group at 804-717-6024.
As 10 News has previously reported, on Aug. 7, 1986, workers were unloading trash from the School Street transfer station in Richmond at a Chesterfield landfill when they noticed what appeared to be human remains, according to Chesterfield County Police.
The remains were taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), which determined the the remains belonged to a woman who died by homicide.
Chesterfield County Police worked with OCME and the Virginia Department of Forensic Science to identify the woman.
Part of the woman’s remains were sent to a private forensic lab in Florida, which developed a DNA profile of the woman. The lab specializes in DNA extraction from “old, degraded and challenging samples” such as bones, fingernails and rootless hair shafts, according to Chesterfield County Police.
Last year, authorities with the Chesterfield County Police Department’s Unsolved/Major Investigations Group sought the services of a DNA technology company in Reston, Va., that produced trait predictions for the unknown woman, including things like her ancestry, eye color hair color, skin color, freckling and face shape.
Police said the company created a composite that depicted what the unknown woman may have looked like at 25 years old.
When police released the woman’s digitally rendered image in March, they said detectives determined the victim in this case may have had ties to the following locations:
- Richmond metropolitan area
- Charlottesville
- Buena Vista
- Lynchburg
- Baltimore, Maryland
Police said the company submitted the woman’s genetic profile to a public database for comparison in hopes of finding people who shared significant amounts of DNA with the woman. They constructed family trees of matches, traced possible common ancestors and also used obituaries and newspaper archives.
All of this research, combined with traditional detective work, led authorities to someone they believed could be a family member of the victim. That person voluntarily proved a DNA sample, which resulted in authorities finding a close family match to the victim.
Additional testing revealed the remains belong to Floyd, who was 16 years old and lived in the 2300 block of West Grace Street in Richmond at the time of her disappearance.