COLUMBUS, Ind. — Columbus police have cleared an ongoing 25-year-old case trying to identify a man who died by suicide along Jonathan Moore Pike near Carr Hill Road on Jan. 30, 1999, learning his identity through forensic genetic genealogy.
Working with the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office and the Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office, investigators were met with decades of dead-end leads until they enlisted the assistance of Othram, a Texas-based corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy, said Sgt. Skylar Berry, Columbus Police Department spokesman.
In 1999, CPD officers were sent to Jonathan Moore Pike where they found a man believed to be in his 50s or 60s who had died by a single gunshot. Two handguns were found with the man, but he did not have any identification or anything with him that led investigators to his identity. His death was determined to be a suicide by investigators.
Through the years, investigators tried numerous ways to identify the man, including running his fingerprints, asking for the public’s assistance in news releases, sending bulletins to regional law enforcement, and entering his descriptors into nationwide databases, including the missing person database. The FBI was able to recreate a photo of what the man looked like when he was living. However, none of these things led to the man’s identity.
Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office investigator Jay Frederick, who worked the case with CPD and the coroner’s office, said using forensic genetic genealogy became an option as it was becoming a new method to solve these types of cases. This method allows investigators to identify potential family members of a person whose DNA they already have.
In this case, Frederick said investigators received a court order to exhume the man’s remains and sent a DNA sample initially to Indiana State Police, where they did not get any matches through a federal database, but then sent a sample of the man’s DNA to Othram.
CPD investigators believed this was the only way to identify the man and bring closure to his family, Berry said.
After sending a sample of the man’s DNA to Othram, leads were generated that led to north-central Ohio, where a nephew identified the man from the FBI’s photo and provided his own DNA to confirm their familial relationship.
With this information, the man’s identity was confirmed to be Leo Michael Murray, a resident of Ohio who was 61 years old when he died. Murray had never been married and had no children. He told family he was moving to Florida before he disappeared, which is why his family never reported him missing to the police.
For the complete story, see Saturday’s Republic.
