{"id":11316,"date":"2024-10-25T10:40:02","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/?p=11316"},"modified":"2024-11-04T10:41:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T15:41:13","slug":"deceased-man-identified-after-over-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/deceased-man-identified-after-over-25-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Deceased Man Identified After Over 25 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After over 25 years of investigating, CPD has used forensic genetic genealogy to close the case of an unidentified man who died by suicide. Working in conjunction with the Bartholomew County Coroner\u2019s Office and the Bartholomew County Prosecutor\u2019s 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.<\/div>\n
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On January 30, 1999, CPD officers were called to a deceased man being found alongside Jonathan Moore Pike near Carr Hill Road. The man was believed to be in his 50\u2019s or 60\u2019s and 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.<\/div>\n
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Through the years, investigators tried numerous ways to identify the man, including running his fingerprints, asking for the public\u2019s 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\u2019s identity.<\/div>\n
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In recent years, nationally forensic genetic genealogy has emerged as a new method to help solve more cases. This method allows investigators to identify potential family members of a person whose DNA they already have. Recognizing this, CPD investigators believed this was the only way to identify the man and bring closure to his family.<\/div>\n
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After sending a sample of the man\u2019s DNA to Othram, leads were generated that led to north-central Ohio, where a nephew identified the man from the FBI\u2019s photo and provided his own DNA to confirm their familial relationship. With this information, the man\u2019s identity was confirmed to be Leo Michael Murray, a resident of Ohio who was 61 years old when he died. Mr. 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.<\/div>\n
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It was very important to investigators to restore the man\u2019s identity and provide answers to his family, highlighting our investigators commitment and determination to providing closure.<\/div>\n
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Some of the investigative resources were funded by Bartholomew County Coroner\u2019s Office and NamUs, a national information clearinghouse and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases across the United States. There is more information about forensic genetic genealogy, cases solved using it, and fundraising opportunities at Othram\u2019s website, https:\/\/dnasolves.com.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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Anyone who is missing a loved one is encouraged to report their disappearance to law enforcement for entry into a national database of missing people. For CPD, there is no minimum amount of time a person must be missing before we enter a missing person into that database.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After over 25 years of investigating, CPD has used forensic genetic genealogy to close the case of an unidentified man who died by suicide. Working in conjunction with the Bartholomew County Coroner\u2019s Office and the Bartholomew County Prosecutor\u2019s Office, investigators were met with decades of dead-end leads until they enlisted the assistance of Othram, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases","category-uncategorized"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-26 04:17:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.columbus.in.gov\/police\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}