Olivia Hayes
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
On a chilly January day in 2009, a hiker found skeletal remains at a homeless encampment near a trailway behind the Conley Road Walmart in Columbia.
Officers began their investigation on Jan. 7. By April 20, with the help of forensic anthropology experts from the University of Missouri, police were able to give those human remains an identity and a cause of death.
Investigators determined that 49-year-old Mark Dailey was killed by blunt force trauma to the head and sharp force trauma to the neck.
Seventeen years after the harrowing discovery, one of the forensic experts who helped identify Dailey’s remains in 2009 says that re-examining the remains could be worth the extra time and manpower for law enforcement, given years of technological advancements.
“There’s always an opportunity to revisit cold cases like this and see if there are any new findings that can be found,” said Mark Beary, who now works at MU’s Research Reactor, but was formally a consulting forensic anthropologist with the Boone and Callaway County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Most recently, in March, Columbia Police identified human remains found in 2025 at Rock Forks Lake Conservation Area as Daniel Thompson, who they say was reported missing in 2023.
Beary explained that in cases like Dailey’s or Thompson’s, forensic anthropologists are called in for assistance by the medical examiner’s office because normal methods of forensic pathology or autopsy are not applicable to human remains in advanced stages of decomposition or skeletonized.
“A forensic anthropology analysis typically provides a biological profile of the decedent based on their skeletal remains, and those aspects generally include an estimation of the victim’s age, their biological sex, their stature, and their ancestral affiliation,” Beary said.
Along with the biological profile, Beary said an anthropologist can also help identify any trauma to the bones.
“If there’s trauma present, those findings are ultimately then used by the medical examiner to make a ruling as to whether a case is a homicide, or some other motor manner of death,” Beary said.
Beary said Dailey had blunt force trauma to the head or face and sharp force trauma to the bones in his neck.
Beary said that in some cases, law enforcement will also take forensic experts back to the scene, as was done in Dailey’s case.
“With the location where the remains were recovered at that particular time in 2009, a homeless encampment, there was sort of a structure there in which the remains were recovered,” Beary said.
He said his examination also found that Dailey’s remains had been at the homeless encampment where he was found since at least the fall of 2008, but possibly up to one year in advance.
Beary said reexamining the remains could be worth the extra time and manpower for law enforcement, given years of technological advancements.
“There’s always an opportunity to revisit cold cases like this and see if there are any new findings that can be found,” Beary said.
Gremore wouldn’t say what clothes or personal items police collected from the scene. Beary said Dailey’s trauma to his neck was consistent with a knife that officers recovered from the scene during their initial investigation. Gremore said police have never been able to confirm if that knife was used to harm or kill Dailey.
“There was a weapon to the neck, but unknown what,” Gremore said. “You can look at the autopsy, and you can tell something very violent happened.”
Gremore said a number of challenges have come with Dailey’s case, like the time needed to identify his remains.
“The faster we work whenever someone’s deceased, the better chances are for us to find out what happened,” Gremore said. “When you have months go by before you’re able to get that information, it’s just going to hurt you.”
According to Gremore, hundreds of people have been interviewed in the investigation over the last 17 years, but there are still more questions than answers. He said Dailey’s unstable housing status also created some hurdles.
“Knowing who friends are, last time someone had conversations with them, that makes it a little bit more difficult,” Gremore said. “But that doesn’t change the fact of how hard we should work into that. There’s still a human life, it’s the opportunity to find those answers that make that more difficult.”
Gremore and Beary both said that due to Dailey’s level of decomposition, it’s also hard to pinpoint when he died, creating a vague timeline to work with.
“This was January. Depending on how hot it was, how much weather there had been as far as precipitation, things like that change the rate of decomp,” Gremore said. “You could guess well over a month or three weeks at minimum.”
Beary said his examination found that Dailey’s remains had been at the homeless encampment where he was found since at least fall 2008, but possibly up to one year in advance.
Harbour House Lead Case Manager Tambra Hickem said that after Dailey’s murder, more effort was put into place to better support and keep track of the unhoused.
“A team of mental health people who go out into the community and they actually go out and check on the homelessness unsheltered,” Hickem said. “Because before something would happen, you wouldn’t know about it forever.”
Police ask anyone who may know what happened to Mark Dailey or who may have killed him to contact them.
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