VIDEO: Inside The Yellow Tape

CHICKASAW AND NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – When human remains are found, an intense investigation kicks in, but those investigations don’t always happen like you see on TV shows.

When law enforcement arrives on scene, the main concern is to seal off the area where the remains were found.

“You have to see what you’re working with just in case this is a homicide, you have to have law enforcement do their job and investigate as well. We all have to work together, between coroners and law enforcement. Mainly, the coroner kind of lays low a little bit until law enforcement finishes theirs, then the coroner takes jurisdiction of the remains,” says Noxubee County Coroner R.L. Calhoun

Calhoun has seen scores of death scenes, but some key things need to be done before the first investigator ever arrives.

For example, if you ever discover human remains like the hunters in Chickasaw County did, this is what you should do.

“You’re supposed to try not to mess with anything. I know it’s human nature to go in and get a closer look, but you need to back out of the area and call 9-1-1, and let the proper authorities get in there, and they can start the investigation,” says Chickasaw County Sheriff James Meyers.

Preserving and not contaminating the scene or body are crucial.

“That’s why we call the crime lab in. They wear suits where no contamination can come off of them. They handle the crime scene, they package all of the evidence that they assume might be evidence, and same thing with the body.”

It can takes hours before a body can be removed from where it’s discovered, and its state depends on how officials will identify it.

“That’s the complicated part. That’s where you use those measures of collecting DNA from siblings, and other forensic studies to try to do everything we could possible do to identify the subject,” says Calhoun.

One of those measures were taken to identify the decomposed body found in Chickasaw County woods.

“In the case of this nature, where we have found some remains, we took DNA samples from next to kin, and it went to the crime lab with the remains, so hopefully we can get a positive identification if it does turn out to be our missing person,” says Meyers.

There are also other options to give those human remains a name.

“You can use medical records as well. It helped a great lot with one case I had, you know a subject had a surgery, after the remains we collected got to the pathologist, sent the medical records, kind of identified with the surgery he had, that’s how we made a positive identification that it was him,” says Calhoun.