Jim Thorpe Police are working in conjunction with the Carbon County Coroner’s office to identify crematory remains found in the Mauch Chunk Cemetery along South Avenue on Thursday.

Police Chief Joe Schatz said the ashes, found in an unmarked box, would be turned over to the coroner’s office for possible identification through DNA testing.

“I don’t think it is anything that was done deliberately or anything like that,” Schatz said. “I’m sure someone had reasons for it, we’re just trying to get an identification so we can know what their wishes were for the remains and bring this to a positive conclusion.”

Coroner Bob Miller said his office would go through several steps to try and identify who the ashes belong to.

“Sometimes if there is a bag of ashes, there will be a name on the bag and the person who did it, but if that isn’t the case here, we’ll get the pathologist involved and do some testing. We try to find out who it is and put the whole story together.”

Miller said this isn’t the first time his office has been tasked with ashes identification.

“Just about a year ago, there was a similar situation in Weissport and we were actually able to find out who it was and who did the cremation,” he said. “Things turned out real well there. Hopefully this turns out the same.”