A Deceased Man who was found locally over 25 years ago has been identified after years of dead end leads.
On January 30th, 1999, CPD officers were called to a deceased man being found alongside Jonathan Moore Pike near Carr Hill Road. The man was believed to be in his 50’s or 60’s and died by a single gunshot. Two handguns were found with the man, but he did not have any identification or anything with him that led investigators to his identity. His death was determined to be a suicide.
Investigators tried numerous different ways over the years to identify the man, including running his fingerprints, asking for the public’s assistance in news releases, sending bulletins to regional law enforcement, and entering his descriptors into nationwide databases, including the missing person database. The FBI was able to recreate a photo of what the man looked like when he was living. However, none of these things led to any identifying details about the man. Local Investigators were continuously met with dead end leads. Working in conjunction with the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office and the Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office, local investigators enlisted the assistance of Othram, a Texas-based corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy. After a sample of the man’s DNA was sent to Othram, new leads were generated that led investigators to central Ohio, where a nephew identified the man from the FBI recreation photo and provided his own DNA to confirm the man’s identity as Leo Michael Murray.
Murray, a resident of Ohio was 61 years old when he died. Murray had never been married and had no children. He told family he was moving to Florida before he disappeared, which is why his family never reported him missing to the local police.
Some of the resources used for investigating were funded by Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office and NamUs, a national information clearinghouse and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases across the United States. You can more information about forensic genetic genealogy, cases solved using it, and fundraising opportunities at Othram’s website, at https://dnasolves.com.
The CPD encourages anyone who is missing a loved one to report their disappearance to law enforcement for entry into a national database of missing people. For the Columbus Police Department, there is no minimum amount of time a person must be missing before they enter a missing person into that database.
Photos Courtesy of The Columbus Police Department:
This attached photo was taken at the scene in 1999.
Leo Michael Murray
FBI Recreation Photo of Murray
