NEW CASTLE, DE — New Castle County police have identified human remains discovered in a Wilmington park 15 years ago as those of a woman who died in 1907, resolving an unusual cold case through DNA analysis and investigative genealogy.
The case began June 5, 2011, when New Castle County police responded to a wooded area in Sellers Park off Edgemoor Road after human remains and a skull were discovered, according to police.
Investigators turned the remains over to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. A forensic anthropological examination initially determined that the partial skeletal remains belonged to a white woman estimated to have been between 25 and 50 years old, police reported.
Authorities entered information about the unidentified woman into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and developed a DNA profile for the Combined DNA Index System, but those efforts did not produce an identification.
The New Castle County Police Cold Case Squad reviewed the case in 2019 and subsequently pursued additional methods to identify the woman, according to police. Investigators obtained a three-dimensional scan of the skull that Professor Joe Mullins of George Mason University used to develop a facial reconstruction.
Detectives also determined the case was a candidate for forensic investigative genetic genealogy. Detective Steve Smugeresky of the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland led genealogical research that included information and DNA profiles voluntarily provided by people across the country, police reported.
A potential familial connection emerged in January 2026.
According to investigators, a potential relative told detectives about a family member whose mausoleum and grave at Riverview Cemetery in Wilmington had been unlawfully entered and desecrated in 2002. Police learned that remains resembling those recovered from Sellers Park had been removed from the grave.
With cooperation from the family, authorities conducted an exhumation and compared DNA samples. Police reported that the testing positively identified the Sellers Park remains as those of Hannah Graham Kleitz, who died from a medical illness in 1907 at age 29.
Members of Kleitz’s extended family joined police, forensic investigators and others at Riverview Cemetery on Aug. 27 to reunite the recovered remains with the rest of her remains and return them to her mausoleum.
Mealey’s Funeral Home and Masonry and Concrete Inc., which had assisted with Kleitz’s reinterment following the 2002 desecration, also assisted with the exhumation and reunification, according to police.
While the DNA findings resolved the identity of the remains found in Sellers Park, authorities did not provide an explanation for who unlawfully entered Kleitz’s grave in 2002, who removed the remains, how or when they were transported to Sellers Park, or whether anyone was ever charged in connection with the desecration.
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