FERNWOOD, Miss. (AP) – Investigators in southwest Mississippi say they may have found human remains in the search for a Maryland college student who disappeared in May 1995.
District attorney’s investigator Truett Simmons tells the Enterprise-Journal that archeologists found a “high probability of human bone” on Thursday. Simmons says it appears to be charred bone fragments, possibly belonging to 19-year-old Donald Lee Izzett Jr.
It’s the third dig at the Fernwood site, where a witness told investigators that the Cumberland, Maryland, teen was shot three times and his body burned.
No one has been arrested, but this month Izzett’s estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Shane Guenther, formerly of Fernwood and now of Bremerton, Washington.
Simmons says prosecutors are more likely to file criminal charges if remains have been found.
