Oxford Eagle, Monday, July 24, 2006

Several reported missing in murder time frame
Police try to solve an enigma

By GEORGIA FINCH
Eagle Staff Writer

The mystery surrounding the identity of a corpse found at the Vaught-Hemingway stadium began to take shape when the coroner’s office estimated that the remains were buried between four and five years ago.

In a short statement released Sunday evening, the Yoknapatawpha County Coroner's Office also said that the remains appeared to belong to a white male. The remains will be autopsied and a full report released as soon as possible, the statement said.

Yoknapatawpha investigators hope this assessment will enable them to locate medical and dental records for missing persons reported in that time frame and match those records with the remains in order to produce a positive identification.

"At this stage we are obviously concentrating on identifying the victim" said Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department Public Information Officer Elizabeth Jones. "Once a positive ID has been made our first priority will be to let any relatives know of the discovery."

The Eagle has learned that a total of 8 missing persons reports were filed in Yoknapatawpha County during the years 2001 and 2002, with 3 of them being male.

Two of the possible matches were both students at Ole Miss who never completed their studies.

"Students drop out all the time" said Jones, adding that "most do find their way home or at least keep in touch with their families."

One student, Charles Sampson of Tupelo, returned home during the holiday season of 2001 and all efforts to trace him since have met with failure. He left his family saying he was returning to Ole Miss but never arrived.

Another student, James Washington of Jackson County, dropped out of college in April 2002 and never contacted his family thereafter.

"Some people just do not want to be found" said Jones.

The third was George Irwin, 30, who lived with his family in Oxford. He exhibited signs of depression before his disappearance around Christmas 2001. He lost his job as a Sales Administrator for a local engineering firm in November 2001 but didn’t tell his wife. He carried on leaving the family home each morning as if he was going to work, and returning home at the end of the day too, until December 18 2001 when he didn’t return. Beverly Irwin, his wife, said he had been withdrawn and silent in the days before he went missing.

A full scale search of Yoknapatawpha County was organised and his family kept his name in the news for weeks.

Reports came in from places like New Orleans and Memphis that Irwin had been spotted, but nothing ever came of them.

Beverly Irwin told the Eagle "We hope and pray it isn't George, but at the same time it hurts us not to know what happened to him. Maybe sometimes it's better to have the closure."