Cold case in the USA: Body identified after 47 years

The coroner's office said the body was 27-year-old Nicolas Paul Grubb from Fort Washington in the US state of Pennsylvania. “This identification brings the family the long-awaited clarification,” said chief forensic scientist John Fielding. Hikers discovered the body in January 1977 on the famous Appalachian Trail.

The hikers reported to the police that the dead man was far too lightly dressed for the cold season. An autopsy at the time determined that the man had died of a drug overdose and that no third party had been at fault.

However, he was not identified and the case became an unsolved cold case. Since the location where the body was found in the Berks district near the Pinnacle mountain peak is well known, the mystery of the “Pinnacle Man” has been talked about ever since. The last ones were exhumed in 2019 because a lead seemed to lead to two missing persons cases. DNA samples were taken at the time, but were unsuccessful. Attempts to reconstruct the face as a drawing using modern technology also failed.

Persistence of an investigator led to success

The persistence of an investigator ultimately led to success: Under piles of old files, the officer recently found the file containing the man's original fingerprints, which had been thought to be lost for decades. The police only had copies, but according to investigators, these were not sufficient for a comparison. The prints were entered into the missing persons database – and Grubb was identified in less than an hour.

It turned out that the 27-year-old had served in the National Guard for a while. Much remains a mystery, however – including the exact circumstances of his death. At the time, investigators believed it was a drug-related suicide, but today's forensic scientists doubt this, as the deputy chief of the medical examiner's office in Berks County told the Washington Post (Wednesday edition). The investigation into the case is therefore continuing.