Shaleen Duckey

By Darcy Ellis
Editor

5-3-2008

One of the lengthiest investigations in recent Inyo County history – marked by 22 months of crippling sorrow for one Bishop family, compounding frustration for Inyo County sheriff’s detectives and rampant rumors within the community – has come to a close this week.
Almost two years since the body of Shaleen Duckey was found along South Barlow Lane in West Bishop, the Inyo County Coroner’s Office has ruled her death the result of “self-inflicted cutting wounds.”
“It’s a suicide,” Coroner Leon Brune confirmed Friday.

The determination came after decidedly long-awaited DNA test results from Department of Justice labs in Fresno that definitively excluded the presence of any other individuals’ DNA in biological samples collected at the scene back in July 2006.
The absence of any other person’s DNA, the nature of Duckey’s wounds (on her wrists) and other factors, such as lack of defensive wounds, led to the ruling out of foul play – which the local rumor mill had all but established as the young mother’s cause of death in the first weeks after her body was found.
Those close to the case from the very beginning, including Duckey’s loved ones, were given reason early on to suspect otherwise, however.
Brune and sheriff’s investigators met privately and at length with Duckey’s immediate family on Wednesday when the DOJ results were finally in hand. Inyo County officials went over every piece of evidence with the grieving relatives, Brune said, in the hopes of providing Duckey’s survivors with some answers that someday could lead to closure and some semblance of peace.
The coroner, also a longtime funeral home owner with decades of experience counseling the bereaved, described Duckey’s loved ones as “distraught” and noted they were given time to break the news to other family members before officials made the finding public Friday morning.
“Frustrating” was the word Sheriff’s Sgt. Jeff Hollowell used to describe the feeling of investigators who were running into a brick wall at the DOJ, and hearing the murmurings of an indignant public as the months wore on with a perceived lack of action on their part.
Reality was, there was nothing the Sheriff’s Department could do once the evidence had been collected by the DOJ except wait until the feds’ test results were complete.
It was particularly frustrating, however, in that the DNA test results were essentially the last piece of the puzzle needed to determine what happened to Duckey on the side of the road so many months ago.
The case all started with a missing persons report filed with Inyo County Sheriff’s Department on July 14. Duckey was last seen the morning of July 12 in front of her residence and when she failed to return home, relatives went to the authorities.

Fliers were posted around Bishop and surrounding areas in an effort to elicit tips on her possible whereabouts. Nothing panned out and more than a week passed with growing dread on the part of her friends and family members, as well as heightened public scrutiny thanks to an unrelated case that also involved a missing young woman in the Independence area.
Worst fears were confirmed July 25 when residents walking along South Barlow Lane about 8:02 p.m. discovered a woman’s remains – later confirmed to be those of Duckey.
At the time, and to this day, it is unknown how long Duckey’s body lay several hundred feet from the roadway which is heavily frequented by runners, bicyclists and walkers. It was speculated it could have been as long as two weeks or even two days, considering the intense heat the valley was experiencing at the time.
According to Brune, the State of California allows time of death to be classified as the time and date of a body’s discovery. As such, Duckey’s death certificate lists her time of death as 8:02 p.m., July 25, 2006.
Because of the “special circumstances” surrounding the death, Brune and Hollowell reported, the Sheriff’s Department called in a DOJ forensic team which processed the entire scene and collected various items of “evidentiary value.” These items, retired detective and former lead investigator on the case Marsten Mottweiler previously reported, included a knife and bicycle.
The forensic team, including a fingerprint expert and a blood serology expert, returned to Fresno with several samples and items with the expectation given to Inyo County officials that results would be forthcoming within weeks.
An autopsy was conducted July 27 by a Southern California medical examiner under contract with Inyo County and additional evidence turned up during the post-mortem exam was sent to the Fresno DNA lab. Within about seven weeks, Brune said, pathology results, including a toxicology report, were complete.
At that point, the coroner had an official cause of death – hemorrhagic shock (blood loss) as a result of cutting wounds on her wrists. (Duckey did not have any other wounds on her body – defensive or otherwise – despite what has been widely reported on the street.) Methamphetamine, amphetamine and ethanol, or alcohol, were detected in her system.
Armed with those results, all Brune needed was to determine a “manner” of death, and couldn’t do that without the DOJ’s lab results.
No one had any idea it would be nearly two years before those results would be forthcoming, though it soon became clear with every new estimate from the DOJ – first it was “in a couple weeks,” then “within a couple months” – that the Duckey case was not priority number one for the Fresno lab.
Mottweiler, who prior to his retirement had been calling into the DOJ once a month for updates, explained that while Inyo County doesn’t do that much DNA processing, he can recall only one other investigation involving lengthy testing for identification purposes, and that took three years.
According to Brune, the sad fact of the matter was that the DOJ lab processes hundreds of DNA results a week for murder trials ready to go to court, and did not see the Duckey case samples to be as pressing.
In the end, Brune said, the case has been a “learning experience,” one that will lead the county to seek the use of different labs for its DNA testing in the future.
A private lab, according to Brune, would be able to return results in about three months instead of 22.
“It will cost the county some money,” he said, “but it will be worth it – for all involved.”