SCIENCE WILL AID CRIME PROBE

Thousands of hours have gone into the investigation of the disappearance and presumed homicide of Roger Miller of Zalma in 1993. Now authorities in Bollinger County will rely on the latest forensics technology to determine if bones found in a drained quarry near Graniteville are Miller's.

What started out as a search for the remains of a missing Fredericktown teen-ager who disappeared in 1989 produced instead a bag of bones belonging to an adult. Although the bones don't make a complete skeleton, they fit with what authorities found at Miller's home: enough blood to indicate the possibility that his body had been dismembered.

Scientific advances, particularly the use of DNA tests to identify human remains, will likely lead to conclusive evidence that the bag of bones found in the drained quarry are Miller's -- or they aren't. It hasn't been that many years since such precise investigative tools didn't exist, and identification would have relied on fingerprints or dental records -- neither of which are available in this instance.