Credit: DDP
David Brown died after being doused in kerosene and set on fire just a few blocks from his home in Atlanta in 1996, but without identification or clues to his identity, his disappearance wasn’t connected to his remains until now. In October, 2023, the case was referred to DNA Doe Project by Danielle DiPasquale, Founder of the Find Our Missing Facebook group. Earlier this year, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office provided a sample for DNA testing. Once a genetic profile was developed, volunteer investigative genetic genealogists with the DNA Doe Project spent a little more than four months researching complex genealogy to come up with his name.
Brown was known as Fulton County John Doe, and buried without his name, while his family had reported him missing at the time he disappeared.
“The lack of records prior to 1870 makes African American genealogical research very challenging,” said genetic genealogist Lance Daly. “We discovered an ancestor from the 19th century who was born in Lincoln County, GA, but later died in Atlanta. This led us to hypothesize that our John Doe had deep family ties to Atlanta and may have been born there.”
Investigative genetic genealogy is a set of techniques using advanced DNA testing and online DNA databases to discover “matching” genetic relatives of an unknown person. By building the family trees for these sometimes distant relatives, investigators with the DNA Doe Project were able to locate the correct branch of the family tree to find David Brown.
“We are proud to have been able to finally identify him after so many years.” said team co-leader Rebecca Somerhalder. “Most of our cases are very complex and we are extremely grateful to those who upload their DNA to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA to assist us in our work.”
The DNA Doe Project is grateful to the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office, who entrusted the case to the DNA Doe Project; Genologue for extraction of DNA and whole-genome sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FTDNA for providing their databases; and DDP’s dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring all our Jane and John Does home.
Republished courtesy of DDP.