Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office — Source of Unidentified-Person Photo Guidance
A man found dead in a suburban Chicago canal has remained unidentified for more than 20 years, and investigators are now asking the public for help putting a name to him. They are hoping new technology can finally break open a case that has sat cold for two decades.
The case was detailed in a report from FOX 32 Chicago, which described it simply as a Chicago cold case centered on a man whose body was discovered in a suburban canal and who has never been identified. The station’s report frames the search for his identity as an active effort, with investigators hoping that newer forensic tools can succeed where earlier methods could not.
A Name That Technology Could Finally Uncover
Investigators hope to use new technology to solve the case, according to the same report, though the specifics of which tools they plan to apply have not been detailed publicly. That approach mirrors a broader shift happening across Illinois and the Midwest, where cold-case units have increasingly turned to forensic genetic genealogy to identify people who died without ever being named…