The body of Mitrice Richardson, whose remains were found in a remote area of Malibu Canyon after she went missing for several months, was exhumed Wednesday, according to officials.
The family had requested that additional remains which had been found and sent for DNA testing after she was buried be placed in the casket, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner.
Richardson, 24, went missing in September of 2009 after being released from the sheriff's Lost Hills/Malibu station. She left around midnight without a car, purse or cell phone. Richardson’s body was later found naked in a Malibu Canyon ravine in early August.
Richardson's disappearance after her release sparked a long public dispute between the department and her family.
In May 2011, Latice Sutton, Richardson's mother, filed a second lawsuit against the county alleging deputies improperly remover her remains from the discovery site.
After the body was found, coroner's staffers told deputies not to disturb them, according to the complaint.
"Despite these orders, the sheriff's deputies improperly removed the remains of Ms. Richardson from the discovery site," the suit alleges.
Three months later, Sheriff Lee Baca and a team of his deputies led Sutton and some of her family members to the site where they said Richardson's body was found, according to the lawsuit.
"After searching the site, a member of (Sutton's) family located a small human bone that had been left on the ground by either the sheriff's deputies who discovered the remains or the coroner who reported to the scene," the suit says.
Sutton claims that, based on her communications with the coroner's office, she later realized that the site Baca and his deputies took her to was not the same one from where her daughter's remains were actually excavated.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore declined to comment on the suit.
Sutton and her ex-husband, Michael Richardson, previously filed suits alleging that deputies failed to get needed medical assistance to their daughter and instead released her in the middle of the night from the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff's Station, despite her strange and unusual conduct.
Those suits were consolidated and are awaiting trial.
