The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office is putting out a call for help to hopefully solve a cold case.
20 years ago, in September of 2004, a teenager was shot and killed near the border. Now, genealogists think he may have family in the Tucson area, but they say we might never figure out his name unless more relatives come forward.
“He was in an area that, at the time was more restricted to drug smuggling than people smuggling, just inside the border, not too far from Sasabe, Mexico,” said Dr. Bruce Anderson, a forensic anthropologist at the medical examiner’s office.
He says over the years, they’ve learned very few details about the teenager, known now as “Sasabe John Doe,” but they are inching closer toward a possible identification.
“We’ve had his case and his fingerprints in the FBI database for 20 years. We’ve had his DNA in the FBI DNA database for 15 years,” Anderson explained. “He doesn’t match himself. Too young probably. It’s possible he’d never been here before.”
His body was found just a few days after he was killed, and his face was still intact enough that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was able to create a clear rendering of him.