BOISE - Boise State University students are aiding Nampa police in the search for a woman who went missing nearly 50 years ago.
Police believe students trained in ground piercing radar technology could uncover the body in the spot it's rumored to be buried.
Fifty-one-year-old Lillian Richey went missing from her Nampa home without a trace back in 1964.
Police have received several tips which have led them to believe Richey's body could be buried underneath the Nampa School District building.
Dylan Mikesell, an assistant professor in Boise State's Geoscience Department, says Nampa police sought out his help in December.
"Police had heard about using ground penetrating radar for forensic problems and wanted to know if we had that capability here," says Mikesell.
Mikesell and his students do have the capability, but he admits being asked to help crack a cold case was an unusual request.
"I have never worked on anything related to buried bodies, we have had professors here that have worked in old cemeteries, they use this same technology to map graves in places where they didn't know where people were buried, but never for this type of project," says Mikesell.
Mikesell and a group of students eagerly took on the job.
"We went underneath the ground, there was a crawl space underneath the building and we took our GPR equipment down there and we scanned the area where the cadaver dogs were interested in, where they were giving signals, so we went and analyzed the area with our equipment," says Tom Harper, a BSU student.
"So what we’re hoping for is that we can distinguish or identify areas where the soil looks like it has been disturbed or unnatural. The other possibility is, that depending on what she was potentially wearing when she was buried in, or if she had clothes on like a belt, or that there's metal down there, things that have a big conductivity contrast compared to the surrounding soil," says Mikesell.
Harper and other students are now analyzing their findings and hope to turn over their results to Nampa police by next week.
"It was a neat opportunity to use our skills that we learn here and also help a family get some closure to a situation they have been dealing with for a while," says Harper.