Chester County cold case: Body of unidentified person to be exhumed 37 years after death
EAST WHITELAND TWP., Pa. - No name. No headstone. No idea what happened. Only tiny red and blue flags outline the grave site of a person only known as John Doe. The flags mark out the spot where crews at Philadelphia Memorial Park Cemetery, in East Whiteland Township, will arrive Thursday morning to exhume a body that was buried there decades ago.
"We don’t have any DNA on file, nothing was retained, so the entire skeletal remains were buried," said Chester County Coroner Sophia Garcia-Jackson.
Garcia-Jackson is hoping to unlock a mystery that started back on Halloween of 1987. That’s when hunters found the skeletal remains of a body in a wooded area off of Creek Road in Caln Township.
A missing persons report back then said the body was a man 40 to 60 years old. But the remains were so badly decomposed the cause of death was changed to "Unable to be Determined." In the mid-80’s, even experts disagreed over "ambiguity in determining the sex and racial background."
No one came forward to identify a missing person, so eventually, the remains were buried in an unmarked grave tucked in a back corner of the cemetery in 1989.
"They issued press releases, they did a facial reconstruction, they put it out to the media. So, after two years without anyone coming forward saying ‘This is my missing person,’ and if there is any connection, the investigation kind of stopped there," said Garcia-Jackson.
Fast-forward three decades. Armed with advances in DNA technology and a 2022 Pennsylvania law requiring all unidentified persons to have DNA on file, the coroner went to Chester County Court and was awarded permission to exhume the body of John Doe.
Thursday morning, the human remains from Block A, Section D, Lot 658 Grave 2 will be unearthed for the first time in 35 years.
Officials say the remains of the body will be brought to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office for DNA extraction. The hope is to find an identity of the person and help bring closure to their family.
"We will extract DNA and submit that to the State Police who will upload it into something called NAMUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and we can extract DNA to do the genealogy to see if there are any living relatives," said Garcia-Jackson.
The exhumation and DNA analysis will cost the county around $13,000, but the cost is being covered by a grant of a missing persons nonprofit organization. Results could take months. But, Garcia-Jackson says it’s a small price to pay to possibly give a name to the nameless.
"We hope to bring closure to families to help them find their loved ones they are missing and make that reconnection so it just why we come to work every day."