By Kathleen Brady Shea
Philadelphia Inquirer
CHESTER, Pa. — On Nov. 18, 1968, a state trooper on routine patrol found a body that appeared to have been dumped in a Chester County field along the westbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
More than 40 years later, the trooper’s colleagues are still trying to identify the man - and hoping that technology recently made available to law enforcement might reveal new evidence.
“All the conventional methods have been tried and didn’t work,” Cpl. Patrick Quigley said yesterday.
He said the victim, who was wearing a rust-colored sweater and houndstooth-check pants, died of a stab wound to the chest and had no identification. The body was covered with a navy peacoat.
Quigley, a member of the Avondale barracks cold-case team, said he attended a training session a year ago in Baltimore organized by the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.
The center had received grant money, and was accepting submissions of bone and tissue samples from unidentified remains, said Quigley, adding that the center extracts mitochondrial DNA from the samples and enters the data into the Combined DNA Index System, an FBI database.
Months later, when Quigley was reviewing files with his partners, Cpl. Thomas A. Waters and Trooper Henry Callithen, the 1968 case seemed like an ideal candidate, especially after District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll authorized the seeking of a court order to exhume the body.
“This could help us find potential relatives so they could be interviewed,” Quigley said.
The prospect of new leads in the case especially appealed to Waters, who had been troubled by one of the victim’s two tattoos: a bulldog with the initials “USMC.”
“You don’t get that tattoo unless you’re a Marine,” said Waters, a former Marine. “And if you get the tattoo before Parris Island [training], you haven’t earned it, and, believe me, you’ll earn that tattoo in spades.”
Quigley said extensive checks of military records were done decades ago and have been repeated with no success, deepening the mystery. No one has looked for the man, believed to be in his mid-20s.
“He could be from anywhere,” said Quigley, adding that the man was killed elsewhere and dumped near the turnpike’s Downingtown interchange.
Fingerprint checks also have been exhaustive.
Cpl. Rich Townsend, who has assisted the team with fingerprint data, described the prints taken in 1968 as well-detailed. He said prints taken by the military during the Vietnam era might have been rushed.
“If the ridge detail is poor, you might not get a match,” he said.
The victim’s second tattoo features a swallow, described as a typical image for a sailor because the birds sometimes are used on the open sea to find land, Quigley said.
The troopers even traveled last month to a tattoo parlor in South Philadelphia, where “Sailor Eddie or Tattoo Eddie” long has practiced his craft, Waters said. Age has slowed him and he wasn’t at the shop when police visited, Waters said. However, his employees said the images the victim had were commonly done for Marines.
Another clue to the victim’s possible military service is a healed bullet wound that was identified in the 1968 autopsy report.
Quigley said the injury was reconfirmed last month. Richard Callery, Delaware’s chief medical examiner, did a second autopsy after a court order permitted the body to be exhumed. The victim had been buried in an unmarked grave at a Quaker cemetery near Kennett Square that accepts the remains of the indigent, Quigley said.
Now, investigators are waiting for the samples to dry so they can be sent to Texas, initiating a process that could take several months.
In the meantime, the team hopes that publicizing information about the victim in the Internet age might produce some leads. Anyone with information is being asked to call the barracks at 610-268-2022 or e-mail thwaters@state.pa.us or pquigley@state.pa.us.
Waters said he sometimes regrets that he never got a bulldog tattoo when he was a Marine.
“If we solve this case, I’ll get one in his honor,” Waters said.
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer