PALATKA, Fla. — The Putnam County Sheriff's Office is seeking to identify a body found in 1981 cold case so his family can his remains and they are investigated the case as a homicide.
More than 40 years ago, sheriff’s office deputies were dispatched to a call of a body found in a wooded area 30 feet from Old San Mateo Road in East Palatka. The body was of a man in decomposition with no identification and nude, according to a Putnam County Sheriff's Office Facebook post.
Decomposition and anthropological analysis on the skeletal remains were not available at the time. The John Doe was buried in a "pauper’s grave" at Oak Hill Cemetery and his case went cold.
In his letter to the FSA Cold Case Advisory Commission, Sheriff Gator DeLoach stated there is strong evidence to suggest this case could be reclassified to homicidal violence once University of South Florida forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle and her team complete a full examination.
In April, circumstances changed in the case when the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s office took over the unidentified cases for the department.
“As I was going through I found this case file set off to the side and as I was looking through it was very small and nothing really that had been done with it since the 1980s. So I contacted Capt. (Chris) Stallings and both of us kind of went on an adventure,” Forensic Investigator Madison Worley said in the release.
With no DNA for testing, Worley asked Stallings about the possibility of exhuming the remains to get some samples to send of for DNA and genealogy.
DeLoach made a formal request for funding from the Florida Sheriffs Association Cold Case Advisory Commission in July, the sheriff's office said. Those efforts led to a crew of about 20 detectives, forensic specialists from the University of South Florida, medical examiner personnel and others to gather last week to an unmarked plot in the far corner of Oak Hill Cemetery where John Doe was laid to rest more than 40 years prior.
“This man was someone’s son,” DeLoach said. “Based on his approximate age, he could have been a father and a husband. He has family who never knew what happened to him and they deserve to know. He deserves to have his name restored and hopefully this is the first step."
Due to the nature in which the John Doe was found, the sheriff’s office is treating this case as a homicide unless information proves otherwise. Testing and imaging will take months, the sheriff's office said.