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ST. LOUIS * Four months after her son disappeared, Rose Best accepts he is dead. She just wants to bury him.

But the unidentified corpse police, the medical examiner and Best believe is her murdered son remains on a gurney locked inside the city morgue.

"They keep saying they can't release the body," said Best, 46, of St. Louis. "Why is it taking so long? I don't understand. I'm trying to find out what's going on."

The morning of Aug. 25, a city grass cutter called police after discovering a man's decomposed body in a vacant, overgrown lot in the 2000 block of East Gano Avenue in the city's College Hill neighborhood.

With the body, police found an Illinois driver's license and a cellular phone belonging to Michael Lattimore, 20, of East St. Louis, who was last seen about a week earlier. But officials say that evidence is not enough to establish his identity without DNA confirmation.

Police believe the man's body had been there several days before he was found and had gunshot or stab wounds to his head, neck and chest.

"It's a tragic case from all angles," said St. Louis police spokeswoman Erica Van Ross.

Best said police discouraged her from viewing the body because its condition makes it impossible to identify him by sight.

Mary Beth Karr, assistant director of the police department's crime lab, said the lab received tissue samples Aug. 27 and began DNA testing Oct. 11. Karr said the lab processes more than 6,000 pieces of evidence per year and handles cases in the order they arrive.

"I understand this woman's pain," Karr said. "We cannot bump up one person's case. We are doing everything we possibly can to have these remains identified."

Once the lab began testing, Karr said a usable DNA profile could not be extracted from the body because it had been degraded by summer heat and exposure to the elements.

"It's taken longer than normal because we couldn't get it to work," Karr said.

Police are now awaiting results of a mitochondrial DNA test from a laboratory at University of North Texas comparing samples from the body to mouth swabs taken Oct. 27 from Lattimore's mother.

Dr. Michael Graham, St. Louis' medical examiner, said the laboratory in Texas is among the few in the country that conduct tests of human mitochondrial DNA.

"I don't see any reason it's not (Lattimore), but we've got to prove it," Graham said. "If you're a family waiting, it would seem like a very long time. But this is very sophisticated technology where there's very limited availability for testing, so time is out of our control."

Police have no promising leads in the case, and Best says she has no idea who might have killed her son.

Lattimore grew up in East St. Louis and dropped out of Lincoln High School, Best said.

He was released from prison in February 2009 after serving a little more than two years for an aggravated battery conviction out of St. Clair County. Best said he "was ready to be something," and had recently decided to join the Army.

Paperwork from the Army about her son's enlistment arrived by mail about a week after he disappeared, Best said. She held a memorial service at a funeral home in East St. Louis on Oct. 25, her son's 21st birthday.

The cell phone police seized still goes to voicemail, Best said. She knows he won't answer but left him a message last week telling him how much she misses and loves him.

"I just want this case closed," Best said. "There's so much hurt that my whole family is going through. This is on my mind all the time. I can't even sleep at night. It's really killing me."

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DNA test keeps St. Louis woman from burying her son

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ST. LOUIS * Four months after her son disappeared, Rose Best accepts he is dead. She just wants to bury him. But the unidentified corpse police, the medical examiner and Best believe is her murdered son remains on a gurney locked inside the city morgue.

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 Raykel Gathing Jaimaca McDaniel and Children 

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 Raykel Gathing Jaimaca McDaniel and Children 