Remains found 50 years ago dug up in hopes DNA might end mystery

WRENTHAM - Investigators are hoping DNA will help them identify the remains of a body found in Massachusetts more than 50 years ago.

Wrentham cold case

On April 20, 1974, two young hikers told police they found the skeletal remains of a white man near the Eagle Brook pumping station in Wrentham.

With no information about the man, the town buried him in Center Cemetery. The case has remained cold for years, until recently, when Wrentham state Representative Marcus Vaughn, members of the town's historical commission and cemetery employees worked together to get a court to authorize the exhumation.

On Monday, the remains were dug up and brought to the Chief Medical Examiner's office in Boston. Samples will be taken there and then brought to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab and possibility another organization where they will be analyzed and a DNA profile will hopefully be created.

According to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office, the remains will be returned to the gravesite and re-buried once investigators have the samples they need for testing.

Genetic genealogy testing

In many cases these days, authorities have turned to genetic genealogy testing to identify remains.

By using DNA to build genetic profiles, they can can then compare them to the profiles of other people with publicly accessible genealogy research and historical records.

The process was used in 2022 to solve the " Lady of the Dunes " cold case in Provincetown.

The FBI took the DNA sequence of a woman who was murdered in 1974 and put it through a genealogical database to find one of her relatives.  She was eventually identified as Ruth Marie Terry, 48 years after her murder.