Vicksburg police said they are convinced they got the identification right when a body was found near a wrecked car in 2004, but have been unable to find out what to tell the Clarksdale mother who has since learned that the body she buried after that wreck is not her daughter’s.

Events started on June 14, 2004, when a city employee spotted a Cadillac in a ravine off Warrenton Road in Vicksburg. Police and then-Warren County Coroner John Thomason responded and a partially decomposed body was identified as that of Rochelle Thomas, 34, a Jackson resident and mother of three children. At the time, Police Chief Tommy Moffett said the body had apparently been where it was found for several days.

Thomas’ mother, Willie Mae Galmore, said she was not permitted to see the body and never felt comfortable with the identification, even after burial at a church cemetery near Lyon in the Mississippi Delta.

She said she asked for photos from the autopsy, but did not receive them until after the death of Thomason, who died in a car accident July 22, 2006, about four miles south of the Warrenton Road site on U.S. 61.

Those photos led Galmore to request an exhumation and DNA tests, which confirmed the body in Thomas’ grave is not hers, and was likely male.

“What we know is that Rochelle Thomas was killed in a car accident,” said Vicksburg Police Lt. Bobby Stewart, who went to the scene in 2004. “Rochelle Thomas’ ID was in the car, her boyfriend at the time and friends positively identified the body as Rochelle Thomas. If a mistake was made further down the line, that’s out of our hands.”Thomason ordered an autopsy, which was reportedly performed by Dr. Steven Hayne at Mississippi Mortuary Services in Jackson before the body was released for a closed-casket service and burial in the Heavenly Rest Cemetery.

There the body remained until it was exhumed in August 2007 for DNA testing. Warren County officials were reportedly notified in September 2007 of the misidentification, but, Galmore said, have not been responsive.

Galmore’s attorney, Derrick Hopson, said today that Vicksburg police had promised a response by Feb. 1, but no response has not been received. Now, Hopson is in the process of filing a notice of claim to the Warren County Chancery Clerk.

“This is not about a lawsuit,” Hopson said. “The woman wants to find her daughter. She needs closure.”

Since being notified about the DNA, Stewart said, police have reopened the case and have requested further forms of identification, such as a birth certificate for Thomas, dental records and DNA of other relatives, but said the family has not cooperated.

Coahoma County Coroner Scotty Meredith, who assisted Galmore in obtaining the DNA sample on the body in her daughter’s grave, told the Clarksdale Press-Register newspaper he doesn’t understand why officials are so unresponsive.

“DNA does not lie. According to the test results there is no way that body is her daughter,” Meredith said. “We called the Attorney General’s Office about the matter and within an hour heard from the Vicksburg Police Department. They told us that we would hear from them by Feb. 1 and nothing has been done yet.”

Galmore said she was frustrated because she repeatedly was told she could not see the body. “‘Don’t come down here,’ is what they told me,” Galmore said. She said she then asked for photos, and Thomason wrote her a letter dated Dec. 21, 2004, saying: “As far as your request for pictures, as I told you numerous times before I do not have any pictures. At autopsy, the pathologist takes pictures of the deceased. I do not have any of those pictures. As far as I know the Vicksburg police do not have any pictures.”

When she did obtain the photos, Galmore said the physical characteristics of the body further confirmed her belief that it was not her daughter. “You couldn’t see a face in the pictures, but the body just looked too big to be Rochelle. It looked like a man’s body,” she said.

Meredith says there are a number of possible scenarios for the mix-up. One, he said, is that there were two people in Thomas’ car and her body was thrown so far from the wreck it was not found.

Or, he said, the bodies could have been switched at some point in the process between the wreck and autopsy and funeral, and Thomas’s body is buried in someone else’s grave.

Meredith said he doubts Thomas is still alive because she has not come back for her children.

Galmore, who has been raising her grandchildren since 2004, says she will keep seeking answers.

“I am carrying this all alone. If I can even sleep three hours I am up and at ’em. It’s beginning to wear me down, but I can’t give up now,” she said.

*The Associated Press contributed to this report.