Genetic genealogy gives N.L. police a break in 22-year-old John Doe case

WARNING: This story contains graphic details some readers may find disturbing. 

For 22 years, his identity has baffled the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. 

The man's severed head had been stuffed in a Billy Boot shopping bag and buried in a dump site in Conception Bay, near St. John's. Two men looking for tree saplings discovered those remains in 2001. 

The unknown victim has been known as Conception Bay John Doe ever since. 

Now, a significant development in the police investigation may help resolve the enduring mystery.

"Based off the research, the ethnic origin of the person is Cuban and they're most likely from the United States," the RNC's lead investigator on the case, Const. Greg Davis, told The Fifth Estate.

Two years ago, the RNC began using genetic genealogy — when DNA is used to do family tree research — to try to identify the man. But the matches with his relatives were too distant to make an identification. 

Then, about a year ago, a woman from the U.S. uploaded her DNA. She turned out to be John Doe's third cousin — this means that her great-grandparents and his great-grandparents would have been siblings.

However, very little family information could be gleaned from the match because the woman had been adopted at birth and could provide little information about her biological family. 

Significant break

The genetic genealogy research did provide one significant break — she and John Doe are of Cuban heritage, Davis said.

The RNC believes that the man was killed sometime between 1994 and 1997 but won't disclose the cause of death, saying it may compromise their investigation. They did confirm that he is a victim of homicide.

"If you have a missing relative from the mid-1990s, please contact our investigators," Davis said.

Over the past two decades, the RNC has pursued several avenues to try to crack open the case. They have held media conferences, used isotope analysis, submitted the unknown man's DNA to the national DNA data bank for the missing and unidentified and sent his dental records to authorities in the U.S.  

It was all to no avail. 

In 2001, the RNC concluded that the skull, which had shoulder length black, curly hair, belonged to a male between the ages of 20 and 40. 

It was not possible to determine other physical features like height because the rest of the man's remains have never been found.  

Victim lived in U.S. from ages 9 to 14

Police at that time said the victim probably lived in Quebec or Ontario or possibly the northeastern United States and that he was probably born in the late 1950s or early 1960s. This was established through isotope analysis and carbon dating.

This process can determine the regions a person has lived in from chemical signatures in their remains.

In 2001, during a police media conference, archeologist Vaughan Grimes said the isotopes that investigators found in the teeth and hair provided a good idea of where the man was at specific times in his life. 

The unknown man's teeth suggested that he lived in the southeastern U.S. between the ages of nine and 14. Based on the type of isotopes found in his hair, the RNC also believes he was in Newfoundland and Labrador about 13 months before he was killed in the province.

"In the last 17 months of life, we have evidence of multiple [residences] occurring for this [individual] … Atlantic Canada, southern Ontario and northeastern United States," Grimes said at the time.  

Davis said this is the case from his 11-year career that he has not been able to let go of and made a public appeal. 

"At this point, we're one profile away from identifying our victim. I'm encouraging anyone with Cuban ancestry to upload their profile to GEDmatch or to contact our investigators." 

The RNC is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the man's identification.  

The Fifth Estate is investigating the barriers to identifying unidentified human remains in Canada.

If you have any information about Conception Bay John Doe's identity, please call 416-205-6679 or write to us at [email protected].