These are the cases that justify keeping a page open. Every one of them was cold, and every one was closed by a technique — genetic genealogy, a volunteer dive team, one relative's DNA sample.
Robert Ivan Nichols, who died as "Joseph Newton Chandler III" — Eastlake, Ohio
A World War II Navy veteran, born 12 September 1928 in New Albany, Indiana. His ship was bombed in 1945 and he was awarded a Purple Heart; he later burned his uniform. In 1964 he told his wife he was leaving. The last contact was a 1965 letter to his son from California containing a single penny.
In 1978 he obtained the birth certificate of Joseph Newton Chandler III, an eight-year-old killed in a 1945 Texas car crash, got a Social Security card in South Dakota, and worked for years as an electrical draftsman in Ohio. He died by suicide; his body was found on 30 July 2002. He was identified on 21 June 2018 by the US Marshals Service working with the DNA Doe Project, confirmed by a son's DNA. Why he left has never been established.
Edwin Mowrey and David Resnik — Arizona
Two Vietnam veterans who became John Does in the Arizona desert. Mowrey disappeared in the early 1970s; his remains were found near Prescott in August 1983. Resnik disappeared around 1972; his remains were found in the Baboquivari Mountains in February 1976. Both were identified in June 2026 — fifty years on — by county medical examiners using DNA sequencing and genetic genealogy.
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Larry Eugene Parks — Marion County, Oregon
A Vietnam veteran who lost contact with his family in 1979. Remains found along Interstate 5 on 18 July 1980. Identified in 2025 by the Oregon State Police Cold Case Unit with the state medical examiner and the Orange County, California sheriff's department, using forensic investigative genetic genealogy. The Oregon unit was re-engaged by an Orange County investigator in 2024.
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Joseph Junior Mulvaney — Des Moines, Iowa, to Thermopolis, Wyoming
A World War II veteran of the Illinois National Guard's 130th Infantry, 33rd Division, Pacific theater. He went missing in 1963. His remains — bones and a skull with a bullet wound — were found in 1992 inside a military footlocker in Wyoming. He was identified in October 2017 by a DNA match to his daughter and buried with full military honors in Cody, Wyoming, on 29 March 2019. The homicide is unsolved and nobody has been charged.
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John Pisano Jr. — Oak Park, Illinois
An Army veteran, 39, who disappeared in 2001. In 2025 a private nonprofit dive team, Chaos Divers, searching for a different missing person, found his submerged Lincoln Town Car in a pond in Hodgkins, Illinois, with a body inside. Identified in May 2026, twenty-five years later. Ruled an accident.
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