Detectives have confirmed the identity of a woman whose remains were discovered last year in a car that had plunged into the Cooper River in 2010.
The woman was Bernadine Gunner of Camden, according to forensic DNA testing by the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.
Gunner, then 52, was reported missing by family members on July 11, 2010, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said.
She was last seen driving her 2006 blue Hyundai Elantra after threatening to take her own life, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Gunner’s remains were recovered from the submerged vehicle May 16.
“While we strongly believed the remains recovered from the Cooper River belonged to Bernadine, the confirmation through forensic DNA testing finally provides her family with a definitive answer and closure,” Prosecutor Grace MacAulay said.
Remembering the lost: Detectives seek answers for cold cases, missing persons
The vehicle was found off a little-traveled stretch of North Park Drive near the Camden-Pennsauken border by the United Search Corps. Members of the corps, a nonprofit, search for people who may have gone missing in bodies of water.
“After the vehicle was towed from the river, detectives and members of the New Jersey State Police Anthropology Unit collected the remains from inside,” the prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.
Bode Technology of Virginia, a private laboratory, extracted DNA from the remains for testing at the Texas center. The results were returned April 16.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Bernadine Gunner’s remains were in a car submerged in the Cooper River
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