Tina Mott was ki*lled and cu*t up by Tim Bradford, who used 19 knives and a meat cleaver. He took all of her teeth out of her skull and flushed her organs down the toilet to make it harder for police to figure out who she was. Two teens fishing in a lake found the skull with flesh still attached. This clue helped solve the cr*ime and got Bradford 25 years in pri*son.
After cu*tting off Tina’s head, Tim put it on his lap and used a pair of nose wire clippers to remove each tooth from the skull. Tim knew that DNA could be taken away from tooth pulp, so when he took out her teeth, he didn’t want that to happen.
He had no idea that Tina had two wisdom teeth stuck in her gums. In the end, this helped detectives positively identify the woman who had been missing for two months.
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Teens Discover Sku-ll in the Lake
On April 19, 1996, the teens were fishing when they found the skull in the lake. Tim DeJohn, 12, and TJ DeJohn, 13, went back to the lake the next day and called the police. At first, the police thought the boys were pulling a joke on them, but they later found out it wasn’t a joke.
Forensic Anthropology Testing
Divers looked for the body in Lindon Lake but couldn’t find any clues. The coroner sent the skull to Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a board-certified anthropologist at Mt. St. Joseph University. Murray is one of only 53 state board anthropologists in the U.S. There was a deep cu*t on the skull that made her think the k*iller had used a machete or other large knife to cu*t off all of the flesh. Dr. Murray found that the skull belonged to a woman younger than 35 years old. Dr. Murray also thought that the victim had been stabbed with more than one knife. The jaw was taken out by force, and puncture wounds in the eye sockets showed that the ki*ller also took out the eyes.
Police looked into recent reports of missing persons without any proof or DNA. Not long ago, only four reports were sent in to Hamilton. Tina Mott, a mother of an 18-month-old child, was one of the people who went missing.
Bradford Says Tina Leaves for Trip to New York
The last time anyone saw Tina, she was living with her daughter and her boyfriend, Tim Bradford. Two months before the skull was found, Tim’s mother Elizabeth said she was missing after she didn’t show up at the family’s homes in New York. She left Bradford to take care of her 18-month-old child.
Elizbeth told the police that her son was a Satanist and was often violent and mean, especially when he was high on drugs. She said she was afraid of her son.
With this information, the police are able to get search warrants for a storage unit that Tim rented soon after Tina went missing. A set of 19 knives with blood on them, a book on how to ki*ll someone with your bare hands, and a notebook full of satanic rituals were found inside the vault.
When the police searched the apartment that Tim and Tina shared, they found blood on the bathroom floor, in the cracks between the tub and the toilet, and on the carpet in the living room.
This possible evidence was sent to a lab to be checked out.
Until then. At the time, Dr. Murray was one of only 53 state-board certified forensic anthropologists in the U.S. He found the wisdom teeth stuck in the skull. She pulled out the pulp of the tooth and took out DNA that was compared to DNA from the 18-month-old. The level of decomposition of the skull hurt the tooth pulp, which meant that the body could not be identified.
DNA Confirms Skull That of Tina Mott
Dr. Murray then drilled a hole into the skull to extract DNA from a piece of bone.
Mitochondrial DNA proved that the skull found in Lindon Lake belonged to Tina Mott more than a year after the boys found it.
The police took Tim to the station to question him. He finally admitted that he ki*lled Tina and told what happened when she was last alive. Then he took the police to a field where he had spread Tina’s body parts all over the place.
Animals had eaten Tina’s body parts, but police were able to find half of her body.
Bradford Confesses to Mur*der
Time told the police that the night of the mu*rder, he was high on acid. He said that he and Tina got into a fight while playing board games. He said that he and Tina got into a fight and that he hit her, which made her nose bleed. His first job was to clean up the apartment while she went to the bathroom to take care of her bloody nose. Tim said Tina was angry as she ran out of the bathroom. He said he c*ut Tina’s throat by accident because he thought she was going to attack him.
Tim said that he had been cu*tting up her body all night. She had her organs taken out and flushed them down the toilet. Then he threw her bones away in a trash bag and dumped them in a field. He couldn’t say why he kil*led Tina when asked.
Tim was later found guilty of kil*ling Tina and given a 25-year pri*son sentence for mansl*aughter. In 2023, he will be free from jail.
