Identity of missing person known
It’s been months but the identity of a person whose body washed up on a beach in southwestern Nova Scotia last fall is now finally known.
The remains belong to a 43-year-old man from Saint John, NB, who had been reported missing on July 11, 2019. The RCMP say his body has been identified through DNA analysis.
Police say they don’t know how the man died, but they’re sure it wasn’t the result of a crime.
The remains had been discovered on the shoreline in Sandy Cove on Sept. 8, 2019.
Earlier this month the RCMP had released photos of the man’s clothing to see if anyone recognized them. A photograph of pants and a boot was released.
Last week a photograph of a skull reconstruction was also released.
The Digby County RCMP had worked with the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service on the case. The investigation was also part of a partnership with the New York Academy of Art to reconstruct the faces of Canadian unidentified human remains.
The skull found on the beach was one of 15 from Canada reconstructed at a New York Academy of Arts Forensic Sculpture workshop that took place earlier this month.
The RCMP released a media release on Monday, Jan. 20, saying that the person’s identity was now known.
RCMP Cpl. Jennifer Clarke said via telephone on Monday that from the timeline of the investigation it seems this DNA analysis was already in the works and was not directly associated with the skull reconstruction.
But the amount of sharing via social media definitely did seem to help in the case and the RCMP are thankful to the media and public for helping to spread the word.
“I think the process was underway . . . before the facial recognition project, this is not related to that. This is not how the ID came along,” Cpl. Clarke said. “Word was spreading about the found remains and I think looking at the timelines, that was underway before we put out the pictures.”
The police department in Saint John did not issue a release when this man went missing and said it won’t release his name out of respect for his family.
“There’s nothing suspicious when it comes to his death,” said department spokesman Jim Hennessy.
Cpl. Clarke said the RCMP in Nova Scotia won’t release his name either because there’s nothing criminal surrounding the circumstances of the man’s death.
It was interesting to see what resources investigators can tap into to try to identify a missing person. The Nova Scotia Justice Department said in a media release last week that students involved in the skull reconstruction workshop used clay to create facial reconstructions.
Late last year the National Research Council had made its way to Nova Scotia to perform a 3D scan of the skull found in Digby County. The scan was printed and later turned over to the RCMP’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains, which had been leading the coordination of the facial reconstruction initiative.
Photographs of the skull reconstructions were posted on the Canada’s Missing website. That is a national public website that features information on missing children, missing persons and unidentified remains cases.
“This partnership offers a unique opportunity for Canadians to take part in helping give these individuals a name,” said Dr. Matthew Bowes, chief medical examiner for the province of Nova Scotia.
Facial reconstruction is a method used to identify unknown missing persons after traditional identification methods such as fingerprinting and DNA testing fail to provide a result.
An autopsy had previously indicated the remains might have been those of a middle-aged man. The person’s age had been estimated to be between 30 and 60.
The provincial justice department says since 2015, four visual identifications have been directly attributed to facial reconstructions performed during the workshop.