For nearly fourteen years, a set of bones found under a busy Chicago overpass sat in a file labeled only with a case number. Now, thanks to a DNA breakthrough and a relative who stepped forward, investigators finally know the man’s name and his family finally knows what happened to him. The identification closes one chapter of a stubborn mystery and shows how fast‑moving forensic tools are quietly rewriting the endings of long cold cases.
The story starts under the Kennedy Expressway, but it does not end there. Similar breakthroughs are unfolding under bridges in Oregon and along the shore of Lake Okeechobee, all powered by the same basic idea: use modern DNA and genealogy to give Human remains a voice again, even decades after they were found.
The mystery under the I‑94 overpass
The case that has Chicago talking again began when a maintenance worker discovered Human remains beneath an I‑94 overpass on the city’s Northwest Side. For years, investigators knew only that the bones belonged to an older man, and that he had likely been dead for some time before he was found. The Illinois State Police, known as ISP, kept the file open, but without a name or a clear cause of death, the investigation stalled in the shadow of the Kennedy Expressway.
The break came when ISP received a DNA sample from a relative who believed a missing family member might match the unknown man. Testing by the Cook County medical examiner’s office confirmed that the remains were those of Ron, who was 64 when he died, finally tying a real life to the anonymous case number that had lingered since 2012. Investigators said there were no signs of foul play and that trauma from a prior crash may have been a contributing factor, so criminal charges are not suspected in Ron’s death, according to ISP findings.
How DNA and genealogy cracked the case
What changed between 2012 and now was not the bones under the bridge, but the tools available to study them. Traditional DNA testing can confirm a match when investigators already have a likely relative, but it struggles when there is no obvious family member to compare. In this case, ISP leaned on forensic genetic genealogy, a technique that builds out family trees from DNA profiles and then works backward to find potential relatives who might never have known the victim was in Chicago at all…