Illinois officials have released the identity of a woman whose skull was found in a Batavia home in 1978 — and said she may have been the victim of a murder long after her death.

Kane County officials and the medical examiner confirmed that the skull belonged to Esther Ann Granger—a teenage girl from Indiana who died in 1866.

“We believe Esther was the victim of a grave robbery. Grave robbing was quite common in that era because it was quite profitable,” Kane County Coroner. Robert Russell he said during a press conference.

“A corpse every few months would give a grave robber a reasonable living, which is why it was so attractive at the time.”

Officers are also looking into the possibility that Esther’s remains were used by doctors as a scientific specimen before the skull was discovered.

Kane County officials and the medical examiner confirmed that a skull found in 1978 was a positive match to Esther Ann Granger, who died in 1866.

Authorities first heard about Esther’s remains after one of the residents of the 1978 Batavia home said a bone fell from inside the wall while a baseboard was being removed.

The couple believed the bone was a human lower jaw.

Officers arrived at the scene and later found Esther’s partial skull inside the same wall.

Esther’s skull was sent to Northern Illinois University’s anthropology department, and experts concluded that it probably belonged to a woman in her 20s, dating back to 1978.

The case eventually went cold after officials added him to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

Experts from Northern Illinois University’s anthropology department concluded in 1978 that it probably belonged to a woman in her 20s. Image: A 3D replica of the skull

The skull was later donated to the Batavia Historical Society and stored at the Batavia Depot Museum until the city’s police department requested it be returned to them in 2021.

Russell later got his hands on the skull and worked with forensic investigators at the Othram Lab to figure out who she was through modern DNA technology.

“What we’re hoping to get is a genetic profile of the family; about this person,” Russell said CBS News Chicago in 2023.

“Now it could be, you know, a few generations away—and by doing that, we’d be setting up tracks to do more gumshoe investigations.

Kane County officers began a follow-up investigation and collected DNA samples from Esther’s second great-grandson, Wayne Svilar.

Using rapid KinSNP linkage testing, Othram’s results and the survey confirmed Esther’s identity.

Svilar is happy to know that Esther can rest in peace now that she has been properly identified CBS News Chicago.

Svilar added that he felt a “sense of closure” and the respect given to Esther in the process gave him “a lot of satisfaction”.

Kane County Coroner Robert Russell and the Othram Laboratory figured out the identity through modern DNA technology

Esther was born in Indiana on October 26, 1848 and was one of six children.

The Indiana woman married her husband, Charles Granger, when she was just 16 years old.

She became pregnant a few months later and gave birth to a daughter, also named Esther, in 1866.

Unfortunately, Esther died in Indiana of complications from childbirth at the age of 17, and the reasons behind the analysis of her skull remain a mystery.

The city of Batavia paid for Esther’s burial, and a private ceremony was held at the West Batavia Cemetery.

Esther is currently the oldest case of unidentified human remains worked by Othram and one of the oldest individuals to be identified using forensic genetic genealogy.