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His body was found 50 years ago and never identified. Now they’re digging him up. Here’s why.
Investigators hope to identify a man whose skeletal remains were found in Wrentham in 1974.
Cold cases:
Fifty years after hikers stumbled upon skeletal human remains in Wrentham, investigators are taking another crack at the cold case in hopes of identifying the man at long last.
On Friday, Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey and Wrentham Police Chief William McGrath announced authorities will exhume the unidentified remains on Sept. 25 in an attempt to develop a DNA profile.
The case dates back to April 20, 1974, when two young hikers alerted Wrentham police to a set of skeletal remains they’d found near the Eagle Brook pumping station. The unidentified white male was later buried in Wrentham’s Center Cemetery, his name having remained a mystery for decades.
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According to The Sun Chronicle, a contemporary news report estimated that the nearly complete skeleton had been in the wooded area at least two years. The man was about 5-foot, 8-inches tall, and investigators found U.S. and Canadian coins and a 10-carat gold black onyx ring with a small diamond at the scene, the newspaper reported.
Massachusetts State Police investigators and a forensic anthropologist assigned to the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will be present for the exhumation later this month, according to Morrissey and McGrath. Authorities said they anticipate the body will be brought to the chief medical examiner’s office, where samples will be collected and delivered to the State Police Crime Lab “and potentially a third-party vendor for analysis and development of a DNA profile.”
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The remains will then be returned to Center Cemetery for re-burial.
In recent years, DNA testing has helped crack a number of high-profile cold cases in Massachusetts by identifying decades-old human remains, including the “Lady of the Dunes” in Provincetown and “Granby Girl” in Western Mass.
According to Morrissey and McGrath, the latest identification effort in Wrentham was a joint effort by cemetery personnel, members of the town’s historical commission, and state Rep. Marcus Vaughn.
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