Laboratory tests revealed fingerprints on the coffin of a young girl whose body was stolen from her Ammon grave in February.
Investigators said this past week that the new evidence may help lead to an arrest in the theft of Sara Anne Shick's body.The 14-year-old daughter of Robert and Sherry Shick of Idaho Falls died Feb. 18 of a neuromuscular disease. She was buried Feb. 22, but someone dug up the grave and took her body that night. A fisherman found the body March 1 in the South Fork of the Snake River below the Heise Bridge.
Wind and snow covered any tracks left in the graveyard, but laboratory analyses of the coffin, a concrete vault surrounding it and some tools left at the scene may provide some evidence.
"They have got some prints that they want us to compare some prints to," Bonneville County Sheriff's Sgt. Kim Marshall said.
Computers will search a database of fingerprints for a match. If none is found, investigators might seek a court order to force suspects to be fingerprinted.
"It's just miraculous," said Ken Brown, Shicks' Mormon bishop. "Her appearance and the condition she was in was really no different than the day services were held. They're glad it's been resolved to the point it has."