ST. LOUIS — Robert Patrick was riding bikes with his children along Deer Creek in Webster Groves when he saw something that has stayed with him ever since.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw like a line of sticks or driftwood or whatever coming down the creek,” he said. “And then, and then the body appeared.”
He quickly told his children to look at a nearby building, trying to distract them.
“I still didn’t really 100% believe my own eyes,” he said. “It's just not something that you expect to happen to you no matter where you live.”
He called the police. Officers pulled the body out of the River Des Peres near Wabash Avenue in St. Louis. That was in July 2020.
The St. Louis Medical Examiner determined the body belonged to a white man. He was found wearing tan cargo shorts with a belt. He was about 5-foot-11 and weighed about 225 pounds.
The remains became one of seven unidentified souls the I-Team profiled in 2021. Since then, three have been identified.
But four more have come in – all of them found in vacant buildings within the past two years.
“We're going to be doing everything that we can, from the beginning,” said Tara Rick, Director of Operations for the St. Louis Medical Examiner’s Office. “Fingerprints, X-rays, dental records, those types of things.
“But even with that being said, once we've collected all of those things, sometimes it's just not enough.”
You can’t use dental records to identify someone if you don’t even know who they are in the first place, she added.
Now, a private lab called Othram has agreed to help the St. Louis Medical Examiner’s Office identify some of those remains through forensic genealogy.
“It's a very big deal for an agency to take interest in even one of our cases,” Rick said.
The man Robert Patrick saw is the first case Othram is tackling for St. Louis.
“We build these very robust, ultra-sensitive profiles that are uploadable into appropriate genealogical databases, and that helps us to narrow down leads or narrow down the identity of potential relatives for the individual,” explained Colby Lasyone, chief of staff for the Woodlands, Texas-based company.
Family Tree is one of those genealogical databases Othram scours for DNA clues.
“We're specifically querying or searching databases where individuals have very affirmatively consented to allow law enforcement to use their genealogy information to help further investigations,” Lasyone said.
The company's name Othram is derived from the Lord of the Rings series, and it means "City Wall."
The company built a crowd-funding site to raise the $7,500 it takes to do the research on each case it selects. So far, the company has helped identify more than 300 people and generated leads on numerous cold cases.
“We have the ability to identify greater than 100-year-old remains,” Lasyone said. “We helped to identify an individual whose skull was found off the coast of Australia and had been under seawater for 90 plus years.”
There are an estimated 14,000 unidentified human remains in the United States.
“I was kind of surprised to learn that there are lots of missing people, and it is often very hard to figure out who they are,” Patrick said. “I had assumed at that point that there weren't that many missing people out there and then if somebody's body was found, it wouldn't take long and wouldn't be hard to figure out who they were.”
The oldest of the eight unidentified bodies Rick is trying to identify in St. Louis was found eight years ago.
“We want to stress the importance of individuals reporting their loved ones missing, and possibly even donating a DNA sample, a family reference sample, because all of those things are part of the puzzle,” Rick said. “We just want to have these individuals names restored their families so they can have some type of closure.”
So does Patrick.
“It just kind of bothered me and always has bothered me that he hadn't been identified,” Patrick said. “Just because he's somebody's kid. If he was my kid, I would want to know what happened.”
To learn more about how you can help pay for Othram to conduct the research on this case visit https://dnasolves.com/articles/st-louis-city-john-doe-2020/contribute.
Here is information on the seven additional remains the Medical Examiner is still working to identify. If you have any information, or believe your loved one is missing, contact the Medical Examiner’s Office at 314-622-4971.
Date found: Nov. 13, 2016
- Location found: Found on vacant lot near Edward Jones Dome
- Demographics: Female
- Circumstances: Skull only recovered
Date found: July 2, 2017
- Location found: Near 9th Street and Chambers
- Demographics: Black man, possibly between the ages of 54 and 64 and 6’1” tall
- Circumstances: Skeletonized remains found with no personal identification, possibly homeless
Date found: June 1, 2020
- Location found: Decomposed remains recovered from the Mississippi River
- Demographics: Man, race unknown, between 36 and 50 years old, between 5’10” and 6’ tall.
- Circumstances: Barge workers spotted remains of a man with tattoos that included a pink bow and the word Zachary, 4-11-12 on his right lateral arm along with the letters “Madd” possibly for Maddie, and “5-?-18” the letters “Ha” with the remaining letters illegible, “5” with the remaining letters illegible. Their left lateral arm is mainly illegible, with the word “Grandpa,” and another illegible tattoo on his right dorsal forearm. He was wearing boxer briefs and socks when he was found.
Date found: April 7, 2022
- Location found: 3928 California
- Demographics: White man
- Circumstances: Skeletal remains found inside vacant building
Date found: Oct. 14, 2023
- Location found: 4414 Maffit
- Demographics: Female, race unknown
- Circumstances: Skeletal remains found inside vacant building
Date found: Nov. 20, 2023
- Location found: 4165 W. Florissant
- Demographics: Unknown race, male
- Circumstances: Skeletonized remains found inside vacant building
Date found: April 6, 2024
- Location found: 11192 Riverside Dr.
- Demographics: unknown, bones only
- Circumstances: Bones found in vacant building
Here are the three cases the St. Louis Medical Examiner’s office has solved since the 2021 Seven Souls I-Team piece aired.
Name: Arnold Gray, 58
- Location found: Vacant house near Yeatman Square Park in the 1800 block of N. Leffingwell Ave.
- Circumstances: Skeleton found with clothing and belongings, including three metal can openers, a blue mini flashlight, a Williams Bay quilted jacket size 3XL and Nike slides.
- How the case was solved: DNA match to criminal offender database
- Cause and manner of death: Unknown
Name: Merecia Tobias, 32
- Location found: A Skeleton of a woman with black hair was found in an alley behind a home on Labadie wearing a camouflage top with matching leggings.
- How the case was solved: DNA match to a family member
- Cause and manner of death: Unknown homicidal violence
Name: William Herbert Bright, 41
- Location found: Mississippi River
- How the case was solved: Family declared him missing and submitted a DNA reference sample
- Cause and manner of death: Possible drowning, suicide