Forensic technology has solved a 38-year-old cold case on a homicide/missing person report for Bryant Keith Bates.
Bates, 21, was last seen alive on Nov. 15, 1988, after leaving his North East Lake family home. When he failed to return from attending a friend’s funeral, family reported him missing to the Birmingham Police Department (BPD). He was last seen wearing a white shirt trimmed with blue and a pair of plaid pants.
Family and police were concerned early on in the investigation that Bates’ may have been murdered. Despite those concerns, it would take 16 years for an exterminator to discover the remains of a human skeleton inside a coal bin. The bin was located in the crawl space under a South East Lake rental home, where the exterminator would stumble upon the remains onr morning on Nov. 22, 2004…