MINERVA, NY (AP) -- Several days of digging on a remote Adirondack Mountains property has turned up bones believed to be those of a woman police say was slain by her husband during an argument 30 years ago and buried where the couple's home once stood.
New York State Police announced Tuesday that investigators unearthed the bones that morning at the site where, 62-year-old Thomas Collard told authorities, he killed his 30-year-old wife, June, in November 1980.
Maj. Richard Smith said an anthropologist has confirmed the remains are human. The bones will be sent to the State Police crime laboratory in Albany for analysis and possible identification.
The bones were found in an area where the Collards' mobile home stood 30 years ago in Minerva, an Essex County town of 780 in heavily wooded, mountainous terrain 80 miles north of Albany.
Thomas Collard was living in Samson, Ala., when he was arrested last month and charged with second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held in the Essex County jail.
Police said he told cold case investigators that he punched his wife in the face during an argument on Nov. 25, 1980. He said he threw her body out the kitchen window into a hole that had been dug for a septic system and covered it over. According to police, Collard said that the following spring he uncovered the body, put lime on it and set it on fire.
After reporting her missing, Collard told police he believed June Collard, the mother of three young children, had run off with another man.
But relatives and investigators long suspected he killed her. Authorities said they got a break in the case last month when new evidence led authorities to question Thomas Collard in Alabama. Police said he confessed and told investigators where they could find the remains.
State Police began digging on the property Aug. 2. Piles of junk had to be removed from the lot before 15 investigators began a week of 10-hour days digging and sifting through dirt by hand in hot, humid weather.
The work paid off Tuesday, when investigators found the bones, although officials aren't saying which ones had been recovered.
"We are excavating for more remains," Smith said. "We have more work to do. We hope we're able to get some closure on this matter."
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