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IDENTITY SOUGHT OF SKELETON FOUND IN WESTMORELAND
 
Westmoreland County authorities are trying to identify a skeleton found along a shore of Currioman Bay, a Potomac River inlet several miles downstream from Westmoreland State Park.

 A skull found at the beach last month touched off a search during low tide that led to the discovery of a skeleton, remains of a homemade casket, buttons, bits of cloth and a pair of rubber boots. Also found in the sand of the location was a .45-caliber bullet.

Authorities have not determined whether there was a cemetery along the beach which has eroded into the water or if the casket and skeleton were washed into the shallow water of the bay.
 
The findings have been sent to the Office of the State Medical Examiner in Richmond. Meanwhile, the Westmoreland Sheriff's Department would like to receive reports concerning any unsolved disappearances.
REMAINS THOSE OF MAN DEAD AT LEAST 50 YEARS
 
A man whose remains were unearthed recently in a remote, marshy area of Westmoreland County probably was killed in a quarrel or tossed overboard more than a half-century ago, authorities say.  Gary Ross, a state medical examiner, said yesterday that the remains were those of a black male who had been dead at least 50 years.

The remains will be sent to the Smithsonian Institution next week for further testing to determine the man's age at the time of his death. Ross said the case is not closed but he doesn't anticipate much more evidence.  Results from the Smithsonian's tests are expected back in a few weeks, he said.

The cause of death is unknown, but officials said the presence of a bullet in the burial box in which the remains were found points to murder. Sheriff Clarence W. Jackson said the man probably was either killed in a quarrel or tossed overboard.

Jackson said authorities unsuccessfully searched county and state records for mention of a burial near Currioman Bay during the first three decades of the century. No coroner's records for the years 1912 to 1920 have been found. "The identity of the man probably will not be known," Jackson said.

The state medical examiner's report confirms the story told to authorities by Thomas "Bunny" Willis, a 74-year-old retired waterman.  Willis called the Westmoreland Sheriff's Department recently after reading a newspaper story about a skeleton found near the shore of Currioman Bay.  The skeleton, he told deputies, probably was buried in 1917.

It was common practice in those days, Willis said, for captains to hire down-and-out men on the Maryland side of the river for a few weeks' hitch on their fishing boats. When payday came, the workers were sometimes shot and tossed overboard, never to be heard from again.  Willis said he was a small child when his father told him that a man named "Bigbelly" Marmaduke had found a black man's badly decomposed body in the bay in March of that year.  Willis said authorities instructed Marmaduke and fellow watermen to bury the man themselves.  Marmaduke, Willis' father and several other men placed the body in a homemade coffin and buried it beneath a cherry tree on the shore of the bay. Willis said he believed it is the dead man whose body turned up this summer.

In July, Gene Church of Colonial Beach found a skull while he was fishing in the secluded cove in the bay. Weeks later, he spotted a skeleton's ribs in the water.  The sheriff's department combed the area and turned up a burial box containing a skeleton. A pair of hip boots were still on the legs of the skeleton. At the bottom of the box was a .45-caliber slug.
 
Last week sheriff's deputies took Willis out on a boat to the spot where the skeleton was found. Willis pointed to a cherry tree on the shore and said that was the grave site his father had showed him years ago.  Church had found the skeleton about 10 feet from the tree, Sheriff Clarence W. Jackson said.
 
Ross and Jackson said the new findings confirm Willis' story.  "It's all perfectly consistent with what we found," Ross said. "We don't suspect it's a recent death."