Hannah Graham Kleitz: A Skull in the Woods Was a Woman Who Died in 1907. Someone Had Taken Her From Her Grave
What the record shows
- Who: Hannah Graham Kleitz, who died in 1907 aged 29
- Where found: Sellers Park, off Edgemoor Road, Wilmington, Delaware
- Found: 5 June 2011
- Identified: 2026, by genetic genealogy and DNA
- Open question: who took her remains from her mausoleum in 2002
Still uncertain
- Who broke into the Kleitz mausoleum in 2002, and why.
- How and when her remains reached Sellers Park, five miles away.
- Who reported the remains in the woods in 2011.
Narrated Mystery: press play and hear the whole case read aloud, like a true crime podcast episode, or an audiobook for a long drive (about 8 minutes). The narrator is an AI voice.
Listen to the narration above first, then read along. The key words are underlined in the story.
- undergrowthbushes and small plants growing under trees
- unidentifiednot yet known by name
- anthropologista scientist who studies human remains and bones
- reconstructiona model showing how something probably looked
- desecrateddamaged a holy or respected place
- mausoleuma stone building that holds graves
- exhumedremoved remains from a burial place for study
- abandonedofficially left with no owner or caretaker
1. Where and when were the remains found?
In a wooded part of Sellers Park, on 5 June 2011.
2. Why had no missing-person database ever matched her?
Nobody had been missing: she died in 1907, and her remains were taken from her mausoleum in 2002.
3. What did a judge allow in February 2002?
The judge allowed the cemetery to be declared abandoned.
A skull in the woods off Edgemoor Road
On 5 June 2011, New Castle County Police were called to a wooded part of Sellers Park, off Edgemoor Road in Wilmington, Delaware.
Someone had reported human remains in the trees. Among them was a skull.
What they recovered from the undergrowth was a partial skeleton.
Nobody knew who she was. It would take fifteen years to learn that she had already been buried once. (NBC10) (FOX29) (MYCHESCO)
“Unknown female, 25 to 50”
The bones went to Delaware’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
A forensic anthropologist studied them and wrote down what the skeleton could tell: a white woman, somewhere between 25 and 50 years old.
There was no name and no clothing that pointed anywhere. There was no missing-person report that fitted. (FOX29) (MYCHESCO) (CBS3)
No match
Her details went into NamUs, the national database of missing and unidentified people.
Her DNA profile went into CODIS, the national DNA index.
Neither system found anyone. No missing woman, no relative, no file to compare her with. (MYCHESCO) (6ABC)
A box on a shelf
The case stalled.
For years, the unidentified woman from Sellers Park was a case number in the county’s files.
Nobody came forward. There was nothing new to test. (CBS3) (NBC10)
2019: the cold case squad
In 2019 the New Castle County Police Cold Case Squad picked the file up again.
“From 2011 to 2019, there’s a lot of scientific changes with DNA and science,” said the department’s spokesman, M/Cpl. Richard Chambers.
Detectives had a 3D scan made of the skull. (CBS3) (6ABC) (INDY)
“These aren’t skulls”
The scan went to Joe Mullins, a forensic art professor at George Mason University. He used it to build a reconstruction of the woman’s face.
“These aren’t skulls; these are lost loved ones that have lost their identity,” Mullins said.
The face was a start. It still did not give her a name. (6ABC) (MYCHESCO) (INDY)
The family tree
The genealogy work was led by Detective Steve Smugeresky of the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland.
He used her DNA and family-tree data that members of the public had volunteered, looking for distant cousins and working back.
In January 2026 a family tree finally pointed to a possible relative. (MYCHESCO) (FOX29) (NBC10)
“Desecrated in 2002”
Detectives contacted the relative. The relative told them something nobody on the case expected.
A member of their family was buried in a mausoleum at Riverview Cemetery in Wilmington, about five miles from Sellers Park.
That mausoleum and grave, the relative said, had been “unlawfully entered and desecrated in 2002.”
Police said remains similar to those found in the woods had been taken from the grave. (MYCHESCO) (FOX29) (INDY) (CBS3)
1907
Her name was Hannah Graham Kleitz.
She died in 1907, at 29, of what police described only as “a medical illness.” No source names the illness.
Almost nothing else about her life has been made public. (NBC10) (CBS3) (AZFAMILY)
A name in bronze
Kleitz was laid to rest in a mausoleum at Riverview Cemetery.
Riverview had been founded in 1872 by eighteen fraternal organisations, including Odd Fellows lodges and the Knights of Pythias. It covers 42 acres and holds more than 36,000 burials.
For the next century, she stayed there. (CBS3) (NBC10) (WIKI)
A cemetery nobody ran
By the turn of the 21st century, Riverview was falling apart.
The cemetery’s own archive of press headlines tells the story: residents trying to save it in 2000, its owners charged in 2001, operations ending, the grounds called “unsafe and unsanitary.” Drought, not detective work, first surfaced the barrel at Lake Mead, and genealogy finally named the Lake Mead barrel victim in 2026, a man nobody had ever reported missing.
In February 2002 a judge allowed the cemetery to be declared abandoned. (RIVERVIEW)
The break-in
That same year, someone broke into the Kleitz mausoleum.
CBS Philadelphia says newspaper reports from 2002 described her coffin as smashed open and her remains taken. A November 2002 headline in the cemetery’s archive says vandalism was continuing. Old bones can still speak with modern DNA, as a 2019 study showed at Roopkund’s skeleton lake in the Himalaya, where the dead turned out to be 1,000 years apart.
No arrests or suspects have ever been reported. (CBS3) (RIVERVIEW) (MYCHESCO)
Sealed again
After the break-in, what was left was put back. Mealey’s Funeral Home and Masonry and Concrete Inc. helped with a reinterment in 2002.
The mausoleum was closed up again with part of her missing.
How her bones got from Riverview to the woods of Sellers Park, and when, has never been explained publicly. (MYCHESCO)
Opening the mausoleum
In 2026, with the support of Kleitz’s extended family, investigators exhumed the remains that were still inside the mausoleum.
They took DNA from those remains to compare with the bones from the woods. (FOX29) (MYCHESCO) (CBS3)
Match
The result was a positive match.
The “unidentified woman” found in a Delaware park in 2011 was Hannah Graham Kleitz, who had died 104 years before.
The reason no missing-person database had ever found her was simple. Nobody had been missing. (FOX29) (NBC10) (CBS3)
Back where she belonged
On Thursday 27 August 2026, family members, investigators and others gathered at Riverview Cemetery.
They returned the recovered remains to her mausoleum, with the rest of her.
“It was very emotional. It was good to see her back where she belonged,” Chambers said. Mullins called it “certainly a win for Hannah’s family.” (NBC10) (MYCHESCO) (FOX29) (6ABC)
The questions still open
New Castle County Police announced the identification on Saturday 5 September 2026.
Her name is back. The rest of the story is not. Nobody has said who broke into the mausoleum in 2002, why her remains were taken, or how they ended up five miles away in the woods.
“We’re not leaving any rock unturned,” Chambers said. (INDY) (NBC10) (6ABC) (MYCHESCO)
Case notes: a woman buried twice
A partial skeleton found in a Delaware park in 2011 belonged to a woman who had died 104 years earlier. Her remains had been taken from her family mausoleum in 2002 (NBC10) (FOX29).
Where the case stands (as of November 2026)
The identification is confirmed by DNA. No arrests or suspects have been reported for the 2002 desecration (CBS3) (MYCHESCO).
The skull found in a Delaware park in 2011 belonged to a woman who died in 1907.
Timeline
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1907 | Hannah Graham Kleitz dies at 29 of an illness; she is placed in a mausoleum at Riverview Cemetery, Wilmington (NBC10) (CBS3) |
| Feb 2002 | A judge allows Riverview Cemetery to be declared abandoned (RIVERVIEW) |
| 2002 | Her mausoleum and grave are broken into and desecrated; remains are taken (FOX29) (CBS3) |
| 2002 | A reinterment is carried out after the break-in (MYCHESCO) |
| 5 Jun 2011 | Police recover a partial skeleton and skull in Sellers Park, off Edgemoor Road (NBC10) (FOX29) |
| 2011 onward | Profiled as a white woman aged 25 to 50; NamUs and CODIS find no match (FOX29) (MYCHESCO) |
| 2019 | NCCPD Cold Case Squad takes the case; skull scanned for a facial reconstruction (CBS3) (6ABC) |
| Jan 2026 | Genetic genealogy points to a possible relative (FOX29) (MYCHESCO) |
| 2026 | Remains in the mausoleum are exhumed; DNA gives a positive match (FOX29) (CBS3) |
| 27 Aug 2026 | Her recovered remains are returned to her mausoleum (NBC10) (MYCHESCO) |
| 5 Sep 2026 | New Castle County Police announce the identification (INDY) (NBC10) |
Evidence locker
Primary records and the closest copies we could trace. No photographs are shown for this case; illustrations elsewhere in this file are AI-generated.
Access: Via press. The police release itself was posted on social media; we could not find it on the department’s news site, so every outlet, this one included, repeats the same release.
Supports: The identification, the 2011 find, the 2002 break-in and the DNA match.
Limits: It does not say how or when the remains got from the cemetery to the park, and no one has been charged over the break-in.
Access: Direct original (a headline list kept by the cemetery’s volunteer group).
Supports: That the cemetery had been abandoned and was being vandalised in the year her grave was broken into.
Limits: Headlines only, with no articles attached; it never mentions her grave by name.
Where the records disagree
| Detail | What sources say |
|---|---|
| When she was found | Some headlines implied the remains were found in 2026; they were found in 2011 and identified in 2026 (NBC10) (CBS3) |
| What was taken in 2002 | Police say remains similar to the Sellers Park bones were removed; CBS cites 2002 reports of a smashed coffin (FOX29) (CBS3) |
| How the bones reached the park | Not explained publicly (MYCHESCO) |
What we still don’t know
- Who broke into the Kleitz mausoleum in 2002, and why.
- How and when her remains reached Sellers Park, five miles away.
- Who reported the remains in the woods in 2011.
- Almost everything about Hannah Kleitz’s life before 1907.
What happened after
Her remains were returned to the Riverview mausoleum on 27 August 2026. Police say they are still looking into the case (6ABC) (NBC10).
Editor’s note
We honestly don’t know why anyone took her. It would be easy to reach for something darker, a ritual, a collector, a dare that went somewhere strange, and the story would get creepier for it. But nothing in the record supports any of that, and we’re not going to invent it.
If anything, the more likely answer bothers us more: that whoever did it barely thought about it at all. A moment of curiosity, a stupid night in an abandoned cemetery. For them it may have been nothing. For the Kleitz family, it was the place where they had laid someone to rest. An old grave that nobody visits anymore is still somebody’s grave.
We also think the fifteen years of work were worth it. Hannah Kleitz wasn’t a murder victim, but she was still the victim of a crime: her tomb was broken and her body was taken. And when detectives started, they had no idea who she was or how she had ended up in those woods. A person doesn’t need a living relative searching for them to deserve their name back. Making sure someone who once lived and had a name didn’t end up filed forever as “unidentified remains” is reason enough.
What stays with us most is the cemetery itself. When Riverview’s owners walked away, it seemed that nobody was responsible any more. Families die out. Descendants can’t always afford to look after a plot. That can happen to anyone’s grave. Nobody can preserve every burial forever, but when graves are cleared or moved, keeping the names and records, and treating the remains with respect, should be a responsibility we share.
— Strange World Files
Case file summary
- Who: Hannah Graham Kleitz, who died in 1907 aged 29
- Where found: Sellers Park, off Edgemoor Road, Wilmington, Delaware
- Found: 5 June 2011
- Identified: 2026, by genetic genealogy and DNA
- Open question: who took her remains from her mausoleum in 2002
Illustrations are AI-generated artistic interpretations, not photos. No real person is depicted with a recognizable face. Read how we research and illustrate these files.
Sources
- Gray News via azfamily, “Remains found in wooded area identified as woman who died more than 100 years ago in 1907” (10 Sep 2026)
- NBC10 Philadelphia, “After 15 years, remains found in Wilmington ID’d as woman who died in 1907” (5 Sep 2026)
- FOX 29 Philadelphia, “DNA identifies woman whose remains were found in Wilmington park in 2011” (5 Sep 2026)
- CBS Philadelphia, “Who was Hannah Kleitz? Remains found in Delaware 15 years ago identified as woman who died in 1907” (6 Sep 2026)
- WPVI 6abc via ABC7 NY, “Remains found in Delaware 15 years ago identified as woman who died in 1907” (Sep 2026)
- MyChesCo, “DNA Cracks Bizarre 15-Year Mystery of Remains Found in Delaware” (6 Sep 2026)
- The Independent via Yahoo UK, “Delaware cops identify remains found 15 years ago” (6 Sep 2026)
- Friends of Historic Riverview Cemetery, press archive 2000–2005
- Wikipedia, “Riverview Cemetery (Wilmington, Delaware)”
