Who was Hannah Kleitz? Remains found in Delaware 15 years ago identified as woman who died in 1907

Skeletal remains found in a Wilmington, Delaware, park 15 years ago have been identified as a woman who died in 1907, and whose gravesite was later desecrated.

In 2011, New Castle County police were called to Sellers Park on Edgemoor Road, where they found remains, including a human skull. Investigators didn't know it yet, but those remains belonged to Hannah Graham Kleitz, a woman who had died a century prior and was buried in Riverview Cemetery about five miles away.

Police transported the remains to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, who determined they belonged to a white woman aged between 25 and 50 years old. There were no hits for her identity in any DNA databases they checked, and the case stalled for a few years.

The New Castle County Police Cold Case Squad picked up the case in 2019, enlisting the help of a forensic art professor at George Mason University to develop a facial reconstruction of the woman, who was still unknown to investigators.

Investigative genealogy techniques were also used, and in January 2026, detectives learned of a possible family connection.

A relative who spoke to police informed them about Kleitz, whose mausoleum and grave at Riverview Cemetery had been accessed and desecrated in 2002.

Kleitz died at age 29 in the year 1907 from an unspecified illness.

Newspaper reports from 2002 indicated the coffin in the mausoleum had been smashed open, and remains were then taken from the site.

Investigators then exhumed the gravesite and compared the DNA to that on the skull and bones found in Sellers Park in 2011. They were a match, and Kleitz's relatives finally had some closure in the case of a two-decade-old grave robbery.

On Aug. 27, investigators and Kleitz's family gathered in Riverview Cemetery as Kleitz's remains were returned to the mausoleum.

Police reported no arrests or suspects in the 2002 grave robbery.