This is the Georgia-Pacific water mill in Bellingham, Whatcom County, Washington.
This photograph was taken in 2008. There has been a mill on this site since 1926, but a new mill was
built in 1938 and was active until it closed in 2007, and then demolished in 2011. But in 1987 it
presented a mystery to the people of Bellingham and indeed the United States as a whole.
Back in the early days, the plant had two boilers, but eight more were added later when the building
was extended. The plant was used to burn wood, oil, diesel and natural gas to create steam
to operate the mill, offices and laboratories. It was purchased by Georgia Pacific in 1963 and in
1987, the year our story begins, the plant produced tissue paper. It's said that when in use the boilers
were lethal places. Air temperature within the stack was around 95 degrees (fahrenheit), but reached as much
as 370 degrees when the boiler was fired. The water within the pipes rose to temperatures of around
240 degrees. On September 20th 1987, an employee of the mill named Roy Harris was responding to
an alarm in boiler number nine, situated in the mills steam plant. An alarm usually meant that
a pipe was leaking somewhere in one of the ten boilers, so Roy Harris climbed the stack
of boiler number nine to investigate. He noticed that the cause of the alarm was because there
had been a sudden change in temperature within one of the heat exchanging units.
Harris climbed the metal structure and peered inside. When he looked down into the depths of
the unit, he saw the badly charred, partially skeletal remains of a person. It lay about 17
feet below and rested on top of 11 parallel steel pipes. He noticed that between the human remains
and the pipes, were items of clothing which looked as if they had been removed and placed between the
body and the steel pipes to give a small amount of respite from the scolding metal before the
individual died from the searing heat. Once on the ground, Roy Harris called the Bellingham police to
the scene, and in turn, they called in forensic examiner Robert Gibb. An autopsy revealed that
the skeleton most likely belonged to a man. He was said to be around five foot nine inches tall and
had several previous bone fractures around his skeletal frame. According to Gibb, these fractures
could have either been caused by the fall or the effects of the extreme heat, or even from a recent
assault. After their initial investigation, the case had no leads and the identity of the body in the
boiler still eluded the authorities. Police then extended their inquiries across the United States
and Canada with the help of nothing more than what they already knew and a forensic drawing
of the man, based on his mostly intact skull. No leads emerged. So the question remained; who
was the corpse in the stack of boiler number nine? Initially the body was thought to be male, between
25 and 35 years of age, and around five foot nine inches tall. Dental records were checked, but none
were ever found, and DNA testing proved to be of no help due to the extreme temperatures that the body
had been exposed to over an extensive period of time. For the same reason it was also not possible
to test for drugs or alcohol. According to the police in 1987, the body had remained inside the
chimney stack for as little as a few days, to as much as a few weeks. A vague estimate, but again,
due to the sheer heat and extensive charring of the body, it was the best they could come up with.
It was normal for the boilers to be heated intermittently, and boiler number nine had been
fired on many occasions in the previous weeks. Particularly on the days leading up to the find.
Between September the 17th and 18th the boiler had been fired for 34 hours out of the 48.
The body had no belongings or identification, apart from a partially burnt Continental Airline ticket or
baggage claim. But the information visible on the document was not enough to give any further clues.
The clothes he wore were a denim jacket, a shirt, jeans, and size 10 shoes. The shoes were sneakers
and not steel-cap boots that an employee would wear. His socks had also been taken off and worn
on his hands. Marks on the inside wall suggested that he tried to climb to freedom, but was beaten
back by the hot metal interior. Close to the body lay a welder's sparking tool, but as there had been
workers in the chimney several years earlier, there was a good chance that it belonged to
one of them and was not used by the victim. The possibility that the corpse was an employee had
already been disregarded because none were missing, and no paychecks had gone unclaimed. A story later
arose regarding a woman who came to the plant in 1987 and was given a guided tour by one of the
engineers - a man by the name of Richard Severson. He recalled that the woman was thin, in her 30s
or 40s, and about 5 foot 4 inches tall. Whilst on the tour she asked to enter one of the boilers,
so Severson showed her an unused boiler which she actually climbed inside and then sat on the pipes.
She is said to have exited and re-entered the boiler several times before being asked to leave.
The circumstances around Severson's tour are unusual, as he apparently didn't mention it to
anyone until after the body was found. Nothing more was seen of the woman after that. Could the police
have been wrong about the gender of the victim? Well, according to the forensic team, the body was
certainly male, and there has been speculation over the years that he was Native American.
No sign of female reproductive organs were found at the scene, and the measurements of the skeletal
pelvis suggested a male, although police admit this is not an exact science and there is room
for error. Two artist's impressions were made of the victim. The first one was in 1987 and it was drawn
by the Oklahoma State Bureau of identification. This drawing depicted a man with neck-length
hair and strong protruding features. This sketch was shared with police forces across the United
States and Canada, but no missing person matches were made. The Bellingham police force worked on
the case until 1993 when it was shelved. The case was reopened by Detective Al Jensen in 1999, and in
2000, an employee of the Bellingham police force who was training to become a forensic artist,
sketched a second drawing of how they believed the person to look. Detective Jensen used this sketch
in his search for missing person reports made between 1986 and 1988. Again nothing was found,
so he widened his search from 1984 up until 1991. A possible match was made in Canada. It was a man
missing from Vancouver, British Columbia. But as there was no indication that he had ever crossed
the border into Washington State, and because there was no DNA evidence, yet again there was
no conclusive outcome. Another story came to light in 2006 when Detective Al Jensen was approached by
someone who knew of thrill-seekers who used to climb the chimney stacks of the plant in the 1980s.
Their plan was to always meet in a pre-arranged place once the climb was attempted. He said that
on one occasion, a male member of the group who was from New York, failed to turn up at the agreed
location. Bellingham police contacted the New York authorities and requested missing person reports
that matched the dates and victims description. They were given five reports but none of them
had dental records with them, and the person who gave Jensen the tip-off could not be tracked down.
So it was another lead gone cold. Although the cause of death is mostly accepted as burning,
and the removal and positioning of the victim's clothes would suggest a desperate attempt at
minimizing those burns, the Doe Network has the cause of death as hypothermia, which suggests he
died in the cold boiler before it was fired. It's also possible that the Doe Network entry could
have mistaken hyperthermia for hypothermia. Also, you'll notice that the timeframe given here for
the person's death is much wider than originally stated by the police. As well as their identity
remaining a mystery, so too was the method they used to access the boiler. When trying to decipher
how the stack was accessed, it was found that there were a few possible ways. One was through a metal
hatch a short distance above where the skeleton lay. This was bolted shut and had not been tampered
with. Another was via a series of staircases which led up to the structure. But once at the top of
the stairs an individual would need to either use pipes and other footholds to hoist themselves up,
or use a metal ladder which stood on a catwalk at the foot of the structure. Another more difficult
method would have been to jump down on to, or near by the stack from one of the surrounding rooftops.
According to Howard McDowell, the manager of the mill in 1987, it was easy for someone to access
the roof and use the ladder. Security at the mill was said to be good in the 1980s, and guards
patrolled the property around the clock. But as there were no security cameras at the mill in 1987, it
was relatively easy for an unauthorized person to gain access, if they timed it right. As well as
'how?' the question of 'why?' has always remained. From an environmental protest to a suicide, to a crime,
to a prank gone wrong, police have always pondered why this had happened. Local environmental groups
were approached, but none reported any members missing. Suicide always remained a possibility,
and although there were signs of an attempted escape, this could easily have been down to a
last minute change of heart once the reality of death had sunk in. The crime theory was one that
had always fitted the circumstance as well, as no evidence of ID were found. And as mentioned before,
there were bone fractures that could have been the result of an attack. However it's also true
that there was no evidence that the person was accompanied when accessing the boiler. Or maybe
the person in boiler number nine was forced to climb and enter the stack, with the threat of
being killed either way. The superintendent at the steam plant even said if you wanted to hide a body,
the stack of boiler number nine would be a good place, because it was hardly ever checked. Whatever
the case may have been, none of the mysteries surrounding the body in boiler number nine
have been solved to this day, and in August of 2004 Bellingham police again closed the investigation.
Speaking on the case before his retirement in 2015, Detective Al Jensen, who reopened the case in 1999,
said: "nothing seemed to fit. Nothing about this ever made sense". In Whatcom County, the bodies
of unidentified people, or people with no known family, are generally cremated, and the urns are
stored in a vault at Green Acres Memorial Park in nearby Ferndale. Apparently after 20 years or when
the storage space is exhausted, urns are buried together in one gravesite. But due to the rules
of privacy at the Memorial Park, the exact final resting place of the body is in itself a mystery