A skull found in Alaska belongs to a man who disappeared nearly 50 years ago, investigators said on Thursday.
Investigators with the Alaska State Police said they identified a skull as belonging to Gary Frank Sotherden, an adventurer from New York who has been missing since 1976.
The skull was discovered by a hunter near the Canadian border in 1997, but the lack of any additional remains made it nearly impossible to identify.
Over 25 years later, investigators were able to use advanced genetic genealogy research to match the skull to Sotherden.
Alaska Department of Public Safety Information Officer Tim DeSpain said investigators were inspired to test bone samples from various cold cases after seeing other success with the technology across the country.
‘These bone samples then went through various laboratory processes to generate DNA profiles, which were then uploaded into public DNA databases,’ DeSpain said.
Investigators believe Sotherden was the victim of a bear attack, based on the ‘shape, size and locations of tooth penetrations’ on the skull.
Sotherden’s family tried to locate him when he first disappeared in 1976. They hired wilderness guide to retrace Sotherden’s steps, who had limited success.
‘He did find my brother’s site,’ his brother Stephen Sotherden told the New York Times. ‘He found his broken glasses. He found identification.’
Since then, Sotherden’s family has assumed he was dead. They erected a tombstone in a local cemetery with the inscription ‘Lost in Alaska in the 1970s.’
Sotherden’s identification is only the latest in a series of successes law enforcement has seen by using genealogical research to solve cold cases. In November, investigators announced that they had finally identified the ‘Lady of the Dunes’ – a woman who was discovered murdered and dumped on a beach on Cape Cod in 1974.
The victim was identified as Ruth Marie Terry, a 37-year-old woman from Tennessee. Police believe she was killed weeks before her body was dumped near Provincetown, Massachusetts. The decomposition was so severe, it took investigators nearly 50 years to make a break in the case.
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