Aug 19, 2010 By Jennifer Harr 3 min read

Dr. Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist called in Wednesday to assist police in their search for remains of a man killed nine years ago, is no stranger to cases that involve Fayette County. Dirkmaat, of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute in Erie, was instrumental in finding and sorting through 2,200 bone fragments of a slain mentally retarded woman years after her death. He also examined the bones of a 13-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted, killed and burned by her cousin in 2003.

On Wednesday, he was called to a remote area of North Union Township, off railroad tracks on Brushwood Road. There, police used information gleaned during their continuing investigation of a 2001 homicide to identify where portions of Jerry Lee Cushey’s body may be.

Law enforcement officials have said that it’s possible Cushey’s body was dismembered and portions buried or left in different areas. While some officials were searching in North Union, another crew was searching in Speers, Washington County.

The search comes one day after police arrested James Myers, 40, of Connellsville and Ronald Michael Curran, 30, of Elizabeth with killing Cushey, 29, on Oct. 12, 2001.

In 1999, Dirkmaat headed a group of anthropologists who dug through a wooded area of Bear Rocks in Bullskin Township looking for the remains of Helen Louise Gillin seven years after she was killed.

Gillin had been killed, and her body burned in her family’s fire pit.

Jerome Venick, the retired state police trooper who filed charges in Gillin’s death, said that Dirkmaat’s work was “instrumental” in the case.

Dirkmaat and his team excavated the scene, which had been moved from the Gillin family’s back yard to a wooded area, and was able to determine that the bones came from a white woman within Gillin’s age range.

Her adoptive parents were charged with killing her, and her father, James Gillin, was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Dirkmaat’s identification gave the case something it didn’t have before, Venick said.

“It gave us a body, even though it wasn’t in the normal sense,” he said. “He was definitely a plus for us.”

Dirkmaat, Venick and Cpl. John Tobin appeared on “Discovery Health” on the Discovery channel to talk about the case after the charges were resolved.

In 2003, Dirkmaat was called in to consult on a case where Brian Keith Hays sexually assaulted, and then killed his cousin and burned her remains in a van in a Normalville junkyard.

And in 2000, when the mummified remains of Ohio medical consultant Ira Swearingen were found in Greene County, he was again called in.

Swearingen was on his way to Uniontown Hospital to assist in a surgery in 1999 when he was kidnapped and killed by several people in Washington County.

Dirkmaat was able to determine that Swearingen’s skull fractures were caused when he was shot in the head.

Several people were convicted in that case.