NATION : Exhumed Body Not Helen Brach
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CHICAGO — A woman’s body exhumed from a pauper’s grave earlier this month is not that of candy heiress Helen Brach missing since 1977, local authorities said today, but a federal agency said the case is still open.
Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein said that he, a forensic ornithologist, an anthropologist, a radiologist and another medical examiner studied the body, found in a suburban forest preserve. “It’s definitely not Helen Brach,” Stein said. “As far as we’re concerned the case is closed.”
Brach, heiress to the Brach Candy Co. fortune, had an estimated net worth of $17 million when she disappeared in 1977 after checking herself out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She was 65. Her estate is now valued at more than $50 million.
She was declared legally dead in 1984. Most of her money went to the Helen Brach Foundation, a charitable trust.
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