State/Northeast

Initial testing fails to identify 1944 Hartford circus fire victims

Published February 08. 2020 12:40AM
By DAVE COLLINS

HARTFORD (AP) — Initial testing has failed to identify two victims of the 1944 Hartford circus fire whose bodies were exhumed from a Connecticut cemetery, the state's chief medical examiner said Friday. ... Dr. James Gill also announced that anthropological examination and dental comparisons excluded a Vermont woman as being one of the two people whose remains were exhumed.

The bodies were removed in October from two of five graves of unidentified circus fire victims at Northwood Cemetery in Windsor. A state judge approved the exhumations in hopes of determining whether one of them was Grace Fifield, a 47-year-old woman from Newport, Vt., who was never seen again after attending the circus on the day of the fire.

The fire at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus on July 6, 1944, killed 168 people and injured 682 others. The cause of the fire in the big top tent was never officially determined, but some authorities suspected a cigarette was to blame.

Fifield's granddaughter provided DNA samples for experts to use in trying to identify the remains.

DNA testing was performed on the remains, but have not yielded identifications, Gill said. Experts have begun another form of DNA testing that may allow for an ancestry investigation, he said.
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HARTFORD CIRCUS FIRE
Initial Testing Fails to Identify Circus Fire Victims
By DAVE COLLINS • Published February 7, 2020 • Updated on February 7, 2020 at 11:21 pm