Look out, Catherine Willows.

Chelsey ZeRuth could be after your job.

But unlike the fictional Willows, portrayed by Marg Helgenberger in the mega-hit CBS drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," ZeRuth is the real deal. The Franklin & Marshall College senior, eyeing a career in law enforcement, has spent months tracing the origin of a bag of bones discovered almost 36 years ago at a downtown Lancaster construction site.

The partial skeleton, she's concluded, belongs to a man who was buried in an 18th-century Quaker graveyard, and ZeRuth has even come up with a possible ID on the remains.

An anthropology and history double major from Northampton County, ZeRuth, 22, has applied for admission to a master's degree program at Saint Joseph's University with a concentration in intelligence and crime analysis.

Seeking an independent research project that could help her get into grad school, ZeRuth consulted her faculty adviser, assistant professor of anthropology Mary Ann Levine, and Alison Eichelberger, of the North Museum of Natural History & Science.

Eichelberger showed ZeRuth the museum's osteology collection — in other words, human bones — housed in the basement in wooden drawers.

"I thought maybe we'd find Jimmy Hoffa," joked Eichelberger, the museum's collections registrar.

Alas, remains of the long-missing labor leader failed to surface, but while conducting an inventory in 2007 Eichelberger had come across a bag of bones that wasn't on her list.

Most of the skeletons in the North Museum's collection are from Native Americans and are registered with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, she said.

But not this one.

The only clue to its origin was a label on the plastic bag that said the remains were found Aug. 6, 1973, at South Christian and Washington streets, to the rear of the 100 block of South Queen Street.

The bones had been turned over to the museum by city police, so upon finding them in '07 she called the Lancaster Bureau of Police seeking more information.

They told her the skeleton — including leg, arm, pelvic and hand bones, ribs and part of a skull — was several hundred years old and probably Native American, Eichelberger said.

She, however, was dubious. "It wasn't from a known archaeological site," she said. "I thought this needed further investigation."

When Eichelberger showed her the mysterious remains, ZeRuth knew this was the project she was looking for.

Road to discovery
She began working on it in September. Using resources at F&M's Shadek-Fackenthal Library, ZeRuth researched the location where the bones were unearthed.

She discovered from 19th-century maps that it was once a Quaker cemetery. ZeRuth then checked out deeds for the property at the county courthouse.

Today, the Salvation Army is on that site, but around 1755 local Quakers bought the land and built a meetinghouse there, with the graveyard in the rear, she said.

As the congregation dwindled, the meetinghouse eventually closed, ZeRuth said; she determined that the cemetery was in use from about 1759-1810, though it still showed up on city maps through 1874.

ZeRuth also learned that the skeleton was uncovered by construction workers using a backhoe as excavation was being done for a new Salvation Army building.

Eichelberger said the remains aren't intact because an explosion was set off before the bones were gathered.

In the next phase of her research, ZeRuth sent a bone from the skeleton to a Miami lab that does radiocarbon dating, and drove to Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute in Erie to have some of the remains examined there.

In addition to the bones, she gave the Mercyhurst scientists a bit of background on where the skeleton had been found. They ran what they had through a database, "and it kept coming up a white male," she said.

The experts — Stephen Ousley and Steven Symes — noticed some interesting physical features, too. The skull exhibited occipital flattening, which is often associated with Native Americans, ZeRuth said. But they told her it was also a common trait found in people of European descent around the 1800s.

And, they said, "there was no evidence of squatting," which would have — because of its effect on bones — helped characterize the remains as Native American, she said.

The man was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, and there was deltoid tuberosity on his upper-arm bone, a sign of strong muscle development. "He did a lot of lifting," Eichelberger said.

Results from the radiocarbon dating in Miami also came back, showing a 95 percent chance the remains dated from 1720-1820, and a 68 percent chance they're from 1740-1800, which is when the Quaker cemetery was in use, ZeRuth said.

She had other information to work with as well. Back in 1973, the police asked famed "bone detective" Dr. Wilton M. Krogman to examine the skeleton. He found no evidence of foul play, Eichelberger said, so the remains were given to the North Museum.

But Krogman did estimate the person who died was between the ages of 45 and 50 — a job made harder because the skull had no teeth, she said.

ZeRuth then went to the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College to see if she could come up with a possible identity. In the process, she learned non-Quakers were buried in the Lancaster cemetery, too.

Though there are several possibilities she found in the death records, ZeRuth said the remains may belong to Isaac Whitelock, a 55-year-old Quaker who came to America from England and died in 1766.

During her investigation, ZeRuth got used to lugging around the bones in a special box, though her roommate wasn't exactly thrilled to have part of a skeleton lying around, she said.

Eichelberger even wrote ZeRuth a permission slip in case she was stopped by the police and they saw she had human remains in her car.

Having finished her legwork last semester, ZeRuth is now writing an honors thesis.

"I enjoyed it tremendously," she said of her research.

Professor Mary Ann Levine, who supervised the independent study, noted that forensic archaeology is a fast-growing field, and "bones are very valuable sources of information."

ZeRuth "is a very dedicated, highly motivated student," she said, and her project can help bring closure not only to possible descendants of the man whose remains were found, but to the museum itself, which housed this mystery for 36 years.

Now, the museum is trying to decided what to do with the bones, Eichelberger said.

ZeRuth did a fantastic job on the project, she said.

"It is like detective work," she said. "I found it fascinating the info she dug up."