Police to exhume unidentified human remains from Potter’s Field: officials

Here's why human remains are being exhumed from Potter's Field in Philly

FOX 29's Steve Keeley has the latest after Philly police began exhuming human remains of victims in unsolved homicide cases at Potter's Field in Philadelphia's East Germantown neighborhood.

PHILADELPHIA - The Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit has announced it will exhume unidentified human remains from Potter's Field located at 12841 Dunks Ferry Road in Philly.

Ryan Gallagher, Assistant Director of the Philadelphia Police Department's Office of Forensic Science, and Thomas Walsh, Lieutenant of the Philadelphia Police Department's Homicide Division held a presser Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. to discuss the RIP in more detail.

The exhumation at Potter’s Field is a continuation of the Remains Identification Project (RIP) started in 2018.

The goal is to use advances in genetic testing to identify victims of homicides or those who died under suspicious circumstances.

"We're in the process of exhuming people who've been deemed homicide victims or died of some kind of violence," said Walsh.

"We're gonna be out here collecting samples from the remains, once we have the samples, we're gonna extract DNA from those samples. Once we do that, we're gonna subject them to the genealogy." said Gallagher. "We're trying to get to a close relative. Once we get to a close relative, detectives can go out and they can interview family members to see if they have a loved one that's unidentified or that they don't know about."

The victims' ages range from very young to people in their 50s or 60s.

Detectives remind folks that there is no statute of limitations when it comes to murder.