The Bucks County Coroner’s office has a new piece of the identity of a naked man whose body was found near an Upper Bucks boat dock five years ago: his head.
Coroner Patti Campi confirmed that a piece of a human skull found in nearly 30 miles away in neighboring Northampton County matches the DNA of the unidentified man foundfloating in the Delaware River near Upper Black Eddy on Aug. 25, 2021.
This finding brings these county officials one step closer to identifying the man, who is one of 10 unidentified unclaimed dead found in Bucks County over the last 75 years.
The headless body of a man was found near the 1800 block of Trails Lane by River Road. He was estimated to be between 40 and 60 years old, and he was also missing his genitals and a kidney.
An autopsy estimated he had been in the water for approximately a week or two. The cause and manner of death is undetermined, Campi said.
Photos of the man’s left forearm, which was inked with what appeared to be a faded arrow symbol tattoo, were released to the media, but generated no leads.
DNA and fingerprints were collected and analyzed, but no matches were found in the databases used by law enforcement.
The information about the headless man was entered into NamUs, the national government information clearinghouse for missing, unidentified and unclaimed individuals.
Bone and muscle specimens removed from the body were sent to a forensic lab for genetic genealogy investigation in 2023, but this was another dead end until a few weeks ago.
That's when Campi learned that a Florida anthropologist working on unidentified remains Northampton County submitted for identification matched a larger skull piece with the Bucks County body.
Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said the skull bone was discovered by people walking along the banks of the Delaware River. He didn't immediately know when the remains were found.
As part of the process to identify the remains, they were submitted for DNA testing, which confirmed that they matched the Bucks County remains, Lysek said.
Additional testing is taking place, and he said the death remains under investigation, declining to provide additional details of the case.
National statistics show that more relatives are abandoning their dead, with some estimates that up to 150,000 Americans go unclaimed in death each year. The responsibility for finding their family falls to the county coroner offices in Pennsylvania.
The unclaimed dead include an estimated 4,400 additional unidentified bodies recovered annually in the U.S. After one year a little less than one-quarter of those bodies remain unidentified, according to government statistics.
In the last four years, the Bucks County Coroner's Office has successfully identified two people. Last year Campi secured a $100,000 grant to identify the current 10 unidentified bodies.
The coroner is working with private forensic labs that use advanced DNA technology and genetic genealogy to create DNA profiles that are compared with profiles voluntarily uploaded to public DNA databases.
Matches are then used to build a family tree to narrow down potential identities based on shared relatives.
Crime and courts reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Skull DNA in Northampton County matches body found in Bucks County
