DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. — The Dauphin County District Attorney's Office on Monday confirmed that a human skull found by hunters in West Hanover Township in 2020 is that of a woman who went missing nearby under suspicious circumstances in 2007.
Heike Leich was 47 years old when she vanished from her home on Fishing Creek Valley Road on August 8, 2007, authorities said. She was last seen standing in her driveway. Her disappearance was reported by her boyfriend and her adult son, who she was living with at the time.
Leich left her purse, which contained her ID and medication she needed to treat a mental health disorder, behind at the home, police said at the time.
Her skull was found by hunters in a wooded area less than a mile from her former home on February 9, 2020. No other remains were discovered.
District Attorney Fran Chardo said Monday that after more than three years of testing, the skull has been positively identified as Leich's.
“It wasn’t a surprise, the confirmation, but you have to go through and do the testing, and with DNA that confirmation is to an extraordinary degree with the numbers confirming it was she," Chardo said.
According to Chardo, the skull was missing the maxilla bone around the nose, the jawbone and all its teeth when it was found. There was also no tissue on it.
Investigators sent the skull to a Forensic Anthropology team from Mercyhurst University, which was assisted in identifying it by the University of North Texas Center of Human Identification.
The anthropologists determined the skull was most likely a woman's, and that its post-mortem age matched Leich's age of 47 at the time of her disappearance. Chardo said that investigators used DNA extracted from a hairbrush belonging to Leich to DNA taken from the skull to find a match.
"Hair doesn’t have the DNA, but the root of the hair has molecular DNA that can be used for such identification," Chardo said.
In a confirmation email to FOX43, a spokesperson with Chardo's office said the cause and manner of Leich's death are still undetermined, and that the investigation is ongoing.
“You can’t turn back the clock, it’s like a ratchet you can turn it back and so in order to preserve evidence you’ve got to proceed and collect evidence as if the worst has happened," Chardo added.
Pennsylvania State Police, who are handling the investigation, did not comment.
“While we don’t have evidence at this point, definitively, either way, it has to be classified as undetermined," Chardo said.
Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers said Leich is believed to be the victim of a homicide.