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Mystery Bodies: Human Remains Unclaimed, Unexplained & Unidentified


Last time I was encouraged to share a really awful story on here I was reluctant to, everyone was so horrified it got no replies and killed the thread. So it's up to you.
 
Last time I was encouraged to share a really awful story on here I was reluctant to, everyone was so horrified it got no replies and killed the thread
what was that thread
 
I occasionally lurk on the WebSleuths forum, and there is an international group of volunteers on there and their off-forum buddies who essentially try to correlate missing persons reports with the unidentified dead, mostly in the US.

They've had some striking successes including the somewhat famous 'Grateful Doe' case where one of them got a pretty good photo together from postmortem sketches and clothing details and then used social media to publicise him. Jason Callaghan was eventually identifed and his family was able to give him a funeral.

It's an area that interests me somewhat, having known someone who went missing from his family for almost 10 years, he was alive and well and I helped to bring them in touch again. There's a national register of unidentified people found in the UK, with cases going back over 50 years. https://missingpersons.police.uk/en-gb/home

Someone, somewhere on the planet could still be hoping and waiting for them to return or at least to have news. I think this is what motivates the WebSleuths groups - it's not morbid nor kudos-seeking but simply wanting to help and having empathy for the families who are still waiting and wondering.
 
This body may finally be named and claimed.

A Thai family believe a woman who is thought to have been murdered and then dumped in a mountain stream in England is their missing relative.

The body was found by walkers wrapped around rocks near Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004. Her identity has never been established by North Yorkshire Police but officers think she was a murdered "Thai bride". A press conference in north-east Thailand heard a family had come forward about a missing relative. The Udon Thani Provincial Justice Office was told the woman, who the BBC is not naming for legal reasons, married a British man in 1991 and moved to the north-west of England four years later. Her mother told the Thai Women's Network (TWN), which organised Thursday's press conference, she had not heard from her daughter since 2004.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46994879
 
This body may finally be named and claimed.

A Thai family believe a woman who is thought to have been murdered and then dumped in a mountain stream in England is their missing relative.

The body was found by walkers wrapped around rocks near Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004. Her identity has never been established by North Yorkshire Police but officers think she was a murdered "Thai bride". A press conference in north-east Thailand heard a family had come forward about a missing relative. The Udon Thani Provincial Justice Office was told the woman, who the BBC is not naming for legal reasons, married a British man in 1991 and moved to the north-west of England four years later. Her mother told the Thai Women's Network (TWN), which organised Thursday's press conference, she had not heard from her daughter since 2004.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46994879

A woman whose body was found in the Yorkshire Dales 15 years ago has been identified, police have confirmed.
North Yorkshire Police said the woman who was found in a stream near Pen-y-ghent in 2004 was Lamduan Armitage, nee Seekanya.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-47623296
 
Very sad conclusion to that unidentified girl in Hartford's Circus Fire
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-03-24/ ... cus-fire/2

Exhumations are underway in an attempt to identify the remains of at least one more among the five Hartford Circus Fire casualties still officially unidentified.
2 victims of 1944 circus fire exhumed in ID attempt

Authorities exhumed the bodies Monday of two victims of the 1944 Hartford circus fire in the hopes of determining whether one of them is a woman who is among five people still listed as missing after the tragedy.

The exhumations at Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, Connecticut, occurred about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the site of the big top fire that killed 168 people and injured 682 others.

Forensic experts at the Connecticut chief medical examiner’s office will try to determine whether one of the two unidentified women was 47-year-old Grace Fifield, of Newport, Vermont, who was never seen again after attending the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus on July 6, 1944. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.apnews.com/79d4150293234da39f6bb8a49715263e
 
Here's a new and intriguing case from the Inyo National Forest area in California.
Skeleton unearthed beneath California peak

The climbers were closing in on the top of California’s second-highest peak when they came upon the grisly discovery of what looked like a bone buried in a boulder field.

Closer inspection revealed a fractured human skull. Tyler Hofer and his climbing partner moved rocks aside and discovered an entire skeleton. It appeared to have been there long enough that all that remained were bones, a pair of leather shoes and a belt.

The discovery a week ago beneath Mount Williamson unearthed a mystery: Who was the unfortunate hiker? How did he or she die? Was the person alone? Were they ever reported injured, dead or missing?

The Inyo County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have any of those answers yet. But it retrieved the remains Wednesday in the hopes of finding the identity and what happened. There’s no evidence to suggest foul play, spokeswoman Carma Roper said.

“This is a huge mystery for us,” Roper said.

The body was discovered Oct. 7 near a lake in the remote rock-filled bowl between the towering peaks of Mount Tyndall and Williamson, which rises to 14,374 feet (4,381 meters). The behemoth of a mountain looms large over the Owens Valley below and overshadows the former World War II Japanese internment camp at Manzanar.

Hofer and a friend had gone slightly off the trail-less route as they picked their way through boulders when they stumbled upon the shocking find.

“The average person who was hiking to Williamson wouldn’t have gone the route we went because we were a little bit lost, a little bit off course,” Hofer told The Associated Press. “So it made sense that nobody would have stumbled across the body.”

Hofer phoned from the summit to report the finding and went to the sheriff’s department the next day after hiking out to speak with investigators.

Sgt. Nate Derr, who coordinates the county’s search and rescue team, said bodies found in the mountains are typically connected with someone they know who has gone missing. The opposite is rarer: finding the remains of someone who appears to not have gone missing or been reported as missing.

They plan to use DNA to try to identify the remains.

Because the body was so decomposed, investigators believe it’s possibly been there for decades. ...

Investigators have gone back through decades of reports of people missing in the Inyo National Forest and come up empty, Derr said. Neighboring Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks also don’t have reports of anyone missing in that area, he said.

Bodies of those who go missing in the mountains are discovered from time to time, but it can take years and even decades.

It took five years — after an exhaustive search was called off — before a trail worker discovered the body of Randy Morgenson, a Kings Canyon National Park ranger who vanished in 1996. A World War II airman whose plane had crashed near Mount Mendel on a training flight in 1942 wasn’t found until 2005 when a receding glacier gave up his body.

Hofer, a church pastor in San Diego, said it appeared to him the body was intentionally buried. The skeleton was laid out on its back with the arms crossed over the chest.

“It wasn’t in a position of distress or curled up,” Hofer said. “It was definitely a burial because it was very strategically covered with rocks.”

The death could have occurred in the days before helicopters were used to fly out bodies, Derr said. It’s possible that the person perished on the mountain and was buried by a climbing partner.

“I can’t say whether it’s intentional or not, but it’s not an area that would be prone to rockfall,” Derr said.

Although the mountain is the state’s second-highest, it’s not summited as frequently as other high Sierra peaks because it is a forbidding approach. The elevation gain from the trailhead in the high desert to the summit is the greatest of any peak in California. ...

Hofer posted about his finding on a mountaineers forum on Facebook that sparked speculation about the death, in part because Hofer described the shoes as the type worn by rock climbers.

That seemed unusual because the area is not well known for rock climbing. And, because most climbers work in pairs, it raised questions about what had happened to any partner or whether the death had been reported. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.apnews.com/4745250e8d3e47d496413e088e9af529
 
Hope they find who they are, be peace of mind to their relatives.

Update ...

Authorities may know the identity of the remains, and this would be the second time they'd been discovered following the person's death. It's a complicated story involving a WW2-era internment camp, internees sneaking away on fishing trips, and a freak snowstorm.
Skeleton may be Japanese American from internment camp

In the closing days of World War II, a Japanese American set out with other men from the infamous internment camp at Manzanar on a trip to the mountains, where he went off on his own to paint a watercolor and got caught in a freak summer snowstorm.

A hiker found Giichi Matsumura’s body weeks later, and he was laid to rest in a spot marked only by a small pile of granite slabs.

Over the years, as the little-known story faded along with memories, the location of Matsumura’s remote burial place was lost to time, and he became a sort of ghost of Manzanar, the subject of searches, rumors and legends.

Now, 74 years later, his skeleton may have finally been found.

The Inyo County sheriff’s office told The Associated Press it is investigating the possibility that a set of bleached bones discovered earlier this month in the rugged Sierra Nevada is Matsumura’s. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.apnews.com/0641394f21a1454c865a51ccf05554cd
 
Update ... Authorities may know the identity of the remains ...

Update on the update ... The remains have now been identified.

'The ghost of Manzanar': Japanese WW2 internee's body found in US

A skeleton found in California last October has been identified as a Japanese-American artist who was held in a World War Two internment camp.

Giichi Matsumura had gone on a hike with fellow internees from the Manzanar internment camp for people of Japanese ancestry when he died in August 1945.

He left the group to paint the scene in solitude when a freak storm hit.

Mr Matsumura was given a sparse burial in the mountains, and details of his death were eventually lost to time.

But last year, he was rediscovered. ...

Officers carried out DNA testing on the skeleton, using a sample provided by Mr Matsumura's granddaughter Lori.

Lori Matsumura told Associated Press that she knew her grandfather's remains were in the mountains somewhere, because her grandmother would show her a photo of the pile of stones that covered his body.

Her aunt, Kazue, also told her he was known as "the ghost of Manzanar".
FULL STORY: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50993884
 
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Every November there are wreaths placed under the plaque at Kings Cross Station in London, commemorating the dead from the fire in 1987 (the day I twice passed through Kings X with parents to the Barbican Centre for my graduation ceremony). It took 16 years to finally put a name to the last (31st) victim.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3419647.stm
 
Authorities recovering the body of a man who'd fallen a total of circa 250 off a cliff while taking photos at Glen Canyon, Arizona, discovered bones nearby that have been identified as human remains.
A man fell to his death while taking pictures on a cliff in Arizona. Authorities discovered other remains while recovering his body

A 25-year-old man died on Sunday after falling off a cliff at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona, the National Park Service (NPS) said.

While authorities were recovering the man's body, they also discovered human remains unrelated to the victim's fatal fall, according to a press release from NPS.

Witnesses told NPS that the man -- identified as Orlando Serrano-Arzola -- was taking pictures at Glen Canyon Dam Overlook on Sunday morning.

He was on top of the rim overlooking the Colorado River when he fell around 100 feet down and then slid roughly 150 feet further, witnesses said.

"The victim suffered severe trauma and showed no signs of life after the fall," NPS said in its news release.

The Coconino County Sheriff's Office and officers with the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area discovered bones at the base of the Glen Canyon Dam Overlook while recovering Serrano-Arzola's body, NPS said. Those bones have since been identified as human remains.

Police and the park service are conducting an investigation into the remains and said they will release more information on the case when it is available.

SOURCE: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/us/m...ona-cliff-other-remains-found-trnd/index.html
 
The unidentified bodies case that intrigues me the most is that of the "Sumter County Does" (or "Jock and Jane Doe") dating from 1976. I can't remember when I first heard of it, but I then read the entire WebSleuths thread* concerning them and was amazed that no-one has come forward to identify either of the bodies.

Both seem to have been distinctive looking in life. Both were found shortly after death (so not decomposed remains). He (at least) seems to have come from a wealthy background (judging by his dental work). Etc., etc.

Yet no really credible identity seems to have been advanced for either of them (at least to my knowledge (I haven't kept up with the most recent developments, if there have been any)).

* there actually seem to be multiple threads on the WebSleuths forum looking at different aspects of the case.
 
One would have thought that with the advent of DNA testing it would not be that hard to track someone down, with so many people submitting to DNA databases
 
One would have thought that with the advent of DNA testing it would not be that hard to track someone down, with so many people submitting to DNA databases

Even with lots of people submitting DNA to genealogy sites the cumulative data (to date) represents only a small / fractional sample of all human genomes.
 
Not mentioned before in this thread, there was an ID finally made in 2018 for a young man whose body was found under the assumed name of 'Lyle Stevik' in a motel in Washington state in 2001. He'd been unidentified for 17 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Stevik

He'd committed suicide, and the case was probably the second-best known online after Jason Callaghan ('Grateful Doe').
 
Not mentioned before in this thread, there was an ID finally made in 2018 for a young man whose body was found under the assumed name of 'Lyle Stevik' in a motel in Washington state in 2001. ...

You were right - it hadn't been mentioned here in this thread, but ...

The Stevik identification had been posted over in the Strange Deaths thread. I've now moved the associated posts in this more appropriate thread.
 
Even with lots of people submitting DNA to genealogy sites the cumulative data (to date) represents only a small / fractional sample of all human genomes.

"More than 15 million people have offered up their DNA to online genealogy services in recent years. While they represent a small fraction of all people, the pool of profiles is large enough to allow 60 percent of white Americans to be identified through the databases, according to researchers.

Researchers believe that in the coming years, 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable, even if they have not submitted their own DNA
."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/jerry-westrom-isanti-mn.html

maximus otter
 
A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack

The man on the trail went by “Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was.

Backchannel_Unidentified-Hiker.jpg


IN APRIL 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything. He didn’t bring a phone; he didn’t bring a credit card. He didn’t even really bring a name. Or at least he didn’t tell anyone he met what it was.

He did bring a giant backpack, which his fellow hikers considered far too heavy for his journey. And he brought a notebook, in which he would scribble notes about Screeps, an online programming game. The Appalachian Trail runs through the area, and he started walking south, moving slowly but steadily down through Pennsylvania and Maryland. He told people he met along the way that he had worked in the tech industry and he wanted to detox from digital life. Hikers sometimes acquire trail names, pseudonyms they use while deep in the woods. He was “Denim” at first, because he had started his trek in jeans. Later, it became “Mostly Harmless,” which is how he described himself one night at a campfire. Maybe, too, it was a reference to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In July 23, 2018, two hikers headed out into the Big Cypress National Preserve. The humidity was oppressive, but they trudged forward, crossing swamps, tending aching feet, and dodging the alligators and snakes. About 10 miles into their journey, they stopped to rest their feet at a place called Nobles Camp. There they saw a yellow tent and a pair of boots outside. Something smelled bad, and something seemed off. They called out, then peered through the tent’s windscreen. An emaciated, lifeless body was looking up at them. They called 911.

Uh, we just found a dead body.”

IT’S USUALLY EASY to put a name to a corpse. There’s an ID or a credit card. There’s been a missing persons report in the area. There’s a DNA match. But the investigators in Collier County couldn’t find a thing. Mostly Harmless’ fingerprints didn’t show up in any law enforcement database. He hadn’t served in the military, and his fingerprints didn’t match those of anyone else on file. His DNA didn’t match any in the Department of Justice’s missing person database or in CODIS, the national DNA database run by the FBI. A picture of his face didn’t turn up anything in a facial recognition database. The body had no distinguishing tattoos.

Backchannel-Unidentified-Hiker-CCSD-flyer.jpg


Nor could investigators understand how or why he died. There were no indications of foul play, and he had more than $3,500 cash in the tent. He had food nearby, but he was hollowed out, weighing just 83 pounds on a 5'8" frame. Investigators put his age in the vague range between 35 and 50, and they couldn’t point to any abnormalities. The only substances he tested positive for were ibuprofen and an antihistamine. His cause of death, according to the autopsy report, was “undetermined.” He had, in some sense, just wasted away. But why hadn’t he tried to find help?

The sheriff's office couldn't spend [$5,000] on a case that involved no crime. But it would love Othram’s help if there were another way to pay for the work. And so three of the great trends of modern technology—crowdfunding, amateur sleuthing, and cutting-edge genomics—combined. Within eight days, the Facebook group had raised the money to run the analysis. Soon a small piece of bone from the hiker was on its way west from Collier County to the Othram labs.

It’s been over a month since Othram started looking through the GEDmatch database. It won’t say anything about what it has found, and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office is keeping quiet as well. But one source outside of the company who is familiar with its progress says that, while Othram doesn’t know Mostly Harmless’ name, it has found enough matching patterns to identify the region of the country from which his ancestors hail.

They might get there, and they might not. A source familiar with the work suggests that the earliest we’ll get an answer is December.

https://www.wired.com/story/nameless-hiker-mostly-harmless-internet-mystery/

maximus otter
 
.......

It’s been over a month since Othram started looking through the GEDmatch database. It won’t say anything about what it has found, and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office is keeping quiet as well. But one source outside of the company who is familiar with its progress says that, while Othram doesn’t know Mostly Harmless’ name, it has found enough matching patterns to identify the region of the country from which his ancestors hail.

They might get there, and they might not. A source familiar with the work suggests that the earliest we’ll get an answer is December.

https://www.wired.com/story/nameless-hiker-mostly-harmless-internet-mystery/

maximus otter

I remember reading about Mr Mostly Harmless a few months ago, what a sad end...

There is an ad-hoc army of volunteers and many fewer paid people who painstakingly try to match and cross-match the DNA of the UID dead into family trees, it does and can indeed take months if a lucky hit/tip doesn't occur with photos/mockups (as happened in the case of Jason Callaghan).

As you already probably know (given your previous occupation) there is finite time available to investigate the nexus between the UID dead and missing persons, if indeed the UID has ever been reported missing.

Thanks for adding the article to the thread.
 
Mystery of woman and coffin found buried on Aberdeen beach

aberdeen-map.jpg


Ignore dropped pin; Bridge of Don is a northern suburb of Aberdeen

Archaeologists are working to piece together the identity of a woman whose skeleton and coffin were found buried on a beach.

b25lY21zOjg0NzM0YmU3LTQxNTMtNDhiMS05NzhjLWUwZmQ4MjEyNjk5OTo2NDllN2U3OC0zZjU0LTQ1MTUtYTA5OC03YzFiMTJkOGFlZGE=.jpg


Bones found close to the site of the burial at the beach at
Bridge of Don

The woman’s skeletal remains and eroding casket were spotted by a family out walking on the shore at Bridge of Don near Aberdeen.
Archaeologists were called by police to investigate with a report soon due to establish the age of the woman when she died, where she may have come from and the possible circumstances surrounding her burial in the sand.

Bruce Mann, archaeologist at Aberdeenshire Council, said the coffin had been deliberately buried on the beach with the remains becoming exposed in the face of a dune.

Initial assessments put the burial to sometime between the 17th and early 19th Century with one early suggestion that the burial may have followed a shipwreck.

https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-a...nd-coffin-found-buried-aberdeen-beach-3052670

maximus otter
 
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