The Penn Museum says it is in possession of more human remains from the MOVE bombing — three years after it was first revealed that university researchers preserved remains from the 1985 tragedy.

Penn Museum officials revealed Wednesday that they discovered the remains during an “ongoing comprehensive inventory of our biology section.” The remains matched records for Delisha Africa, who was 12 when she was killed along with 10 other members of the liberation and activist group MOVE, the museum said.

It was the latest development in the decades-long saga surrounding the MOVE bombing and its aftermath — widely considered one of the most outrageous acts of government violence in Philadelphia history, the effects of which still reverberate among survivors, members the family and the city in general.

After the bombing, two Penn researchers were asked to help identify the remains of bombing victims whose identities were in dispute. For decades, they kept a few remains at the museum – at first an open secret published in The Inquirer in 2021.

A later one news report in Billy Penn said the museum may have remains from two children killed in the bombing, Delisha and Katricia Dotson, 14, but independent investigators contracted by the university said in 2022 that the school had the remains of a single victim who could not be identified conclusively.

Those investigators also said they had “no credible factual or scientific evidence” that the museum held the remains of the second child, Delisha Africa.

But now, the university says, it appears that Delisha’s remains have been kept at the museum. Penn’s brief statementposted on a MOVE victim updates page, did not say how the remains got to his museum or which employees originally obtained them.

He also did not elaborate on the nature of the remains or say how they were identified as being consistent with Delisha Africa.

Penn said they informed the family in Africa about the findings.

“We are committed to full transparency regarding any new evidence that may emerge,” the museum notes on its website.

Although Penn said the original set of remains kept at the museum could not be identified, lawyers for Lionell Dotson, Katricia’s brother, said in a statement that the child’s remains were kept there. They added that they are “disgusted and disappointed, but unfortunately (…) not surprised” that more remains were found.

“For nearly 40 years, the City of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Penn Museum have refused to treat the MOVE Bombing victims or their families with the most basic level of respect and decency, and this latest revelation is just the latest in a long line of atrocities that black people in America have had to live with,” attorneys Daniel Hartstein and Bakari Sellers wrote.

“The harm that Penn has done is absolutely horrific and inexcusable. It’s time to do the right thing so these kids can finally rest in peace.”

” READ MORE: The brother of two MOVE victims has finally received his remains back from the Medical Examiner’s Office

Years of mistakes

For years, MOVE activists and family members have sought to understand what happened to the bodies of MOVE victims, which in some cases were stored for years at the Penn Museum and the city’s health department.

The problems started almost immediately after The attack of May 13, 1985part of the Philadelphia police’s attempt to evict Africa, whose activities and fortified home have sparked a series of complaints in their West Philadelphia neighborhood.

During a day-long standoff, police dropped explosives on the house from a helicopter. The city allowed the ensuing fire to spread to surrounding blocks, destroying 61 homes and leaving hundreds homeless. Six children and five adults in the MOVE home were killed.

After the fire was extinguished, the medical forensic office of the municipality did not immediately secure the sceneleaving the Fire and Police to dig through the ruins with cranes – destroying crucial evidence and damaging the remains of the victims in the process.

The remains were then shuttled between city pathologists, outside consultants and University of Pennsylvania anthropologists who disagreed on the remains’ identities. The bodies have not been returned to family members for months.

Looking for answers

Janet Monge, a former curator of the Penn Museumworked to identify MOVE victims in the 1980s with her mentor, Penn anthropology professor Alan Mann.

The MOVE commission that investigated the bombing immediately after and the city medical examiner’s office disagreed on the identities of two sets of remains: The commission believed that one set of bones, labeled “B1,” were those of Kattricia Dotson and a another set, labeled “G”, belonged to Delisha Africa. Mann and Monge were asked to examine them to resolve the dispute.

An independent review later commissioned by Penn found that Mann and Monge then came into possession of bones suspected to be Kattricia’s. They could not determine whether Mann and Monge had the set of remains suspected to be Delisha’s, and concluded that those bones had never been to the museum.

The analysis determined that Mann and Monge never returned the bones suspected of belonging to Kattricia for years, moving them between Penn and Princeton University, where Mann later worked. In 2019, Monge used those bones, a pelvic bone and part of a femur, as teaching tools in an online video titled “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology.”

In 2021, activist Abdul-Aliy Muhammad reported in The Inquirer that those anthropologists kept some of the remains and called on the school to “apologize and backtrack.”

A month later, the city’s health department revealed that the coroner’s office also kept the remains of MOVE victims, abandoned in an office box for decades.

The health commissioner at the time, Thomas Farley, resigned after admitting that staff found the box in 2017 and that he had ordered it to be cremated to relieve the pain of Africa’s family. The order was never executed and the box was found shortly after Farley’s resignation.

Penn returned the remains shown in the 2019 video, which the university’s independent review says are unidentified, to the Africa family in 2021.

“After consultation with MOVE members and unsuccessful attempts to reach possible relatives, the Penn Museum arranged for the remains that were shown in the video to be returned to MOVE members on July 2, 2021,” the independent review states.

The city returned the remains found in the box at the medical examiner’s office, identified as Katricia and Zanetta Dotson, to their brother in 2022.

In 2023, Muhammad and several surviving family members of the victims held a press conference claiming they had photographic evidence that Monge kept more bone fragments from the investigation than she had previously said.

Monge told investigators hired by Penn and Princeton University, both working on separate, independent reports into the handling of MOVE victims’ remains, that she was in possession of only one victim’s remains.

But Muhammad shared with reporters a photo of Monge next to several bone fragments, saying two people “trained in human osteology” independently agreed that the remains were those of Kattricia Dotson and Delisha Africa.

At the time, Monge’s lawyer said the claims were “nothing new” and declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation that includes a civil complaint filed by Monge against The Inquirer, Muhammad and other media outletsclaiming defamation.

Writer Ximena Conde contributed to this article.