Russell Hill and Carol Clay.Credit:The Age
Sifting through the soil at a secluded site in the state’s alpine region,forensic experts also found a silver metal ring and a watch – the most obvious clues,even to the lay person,that this was the final resting place of the missing pair.
On Wednesday,forensic anthropologist Soren Blau,who manages human identification at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM),told a Supreme Court jury the extent to which the bodies were burnt meant that more than half of the thousands of skeletal remains were unidentifiable.
“Although fragmentary,one of the roles of a forensic anthropologist is to look for duplications,” Blau said. “We know humans have a left and right arm. If we find,as we did in this case,two left distal radius bones of the forearm by finding two …[this] indicates at least two individuals present.
“I was able to say that the fragments of bone were those of adults.”
Giving evidence remotely from Ireland,where she is on secondment for an international conference on missing persons,Blau said she became involved in the search for Hill and Clay on November 26,2021,at the request of police.
At Union Spur Track,near Dargo,the site was divided into six search areas with experts using hand sieves,as well as an excavator,to examine the scene.