The DNA Doe Project has identified the body of a man after nearly 40 year, as well as skeletal remains recovered in 2012.
On Feb. 7, 1985, the frozen remains of a Caucasian man between 20-40 years old were found on the second floor of the abandoned JJ Hill Building in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was 5’ 11” and 180 pounds. The man was believed to have been homeless, and he died of exposure weeks to months prior to being discovered.
With no clues as to his identity, the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office brought this case to the DNA Doe Project, whose expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify John and Jane Does. A team began working on this case in May 2024 and, after just two days of research, they honed in on the identity of the John Doe as Frank Nicholas Augenti. Born in 1951 in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, Augenti was 33 years old at the time of his death, and his last known address was in New York City.
“It was immediately clear from the DNA results that the unidentified man had Italian heritage,” said Sara Hoffman, team co-leader. “When we came across Frank Augenti, we saw that all four of his grandparents had immigrated to America from Italy.”
Further research into Augenti revealed that he had dropped off the radar in the 1980s, and the team on this case found further evidence to suggest that he could be Hill Building John Doe. His name was presented to the medical examiner’s office and, in August 2024, this identification was confirmed.
“We were very fortunate that a cousin had chosen to upload their DNA results to GEDmatch,” said Lisa Ivany, team co-leader. “Without their DNA, this case would still be unsolved. Italian Americans are underrepresented on the DNA databases we have access to, but the more that people upload their DNA results to GEDmatch, FTDNA or DNA Justice, the more cases we’ll be able to solve.”
One day earlier, DNA Doe Project identified skeletal remains recovered in Elizabethtown in 2012 as Mitchell Mendelson, who lived in the area before he died. Mendelson grew up in New York State, and had lived in Alabama, Virginia, and Massachusetts earlier in his life.
When investigators recovered remains near the Masonic Village in Elizabethtown in November 2012, they were unable to immediately identify the man wearing a camouflage t-shirt and jeans. The case went cold, and it would be more than a decade until the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office decided to work with DNA Doe Project to try investigative genetic genealogy to identify the John Doe.
Prior DNA analysis had been completed, so the laboratory process to develop a DNA profile to upload to GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA was completed quickly and the team of five DNA Doe Project volunteers worked 80 hours over 4 days to find Mendelson’s branch of the family tree.
The initial assessment of John Doe’s genetic ancestry showed that the case would be a challenge - he was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. Genetic genealogy is more difficult with the Ashkenazi Jewish population due to many previous generations of marriage within the same community.
"When we see Jewish DNA in the profile, we try to assign specialist genetic genealogists to the case," said Executive Director of Case Management Jennifer Randolph. "Adina Newman set up a strategy that had the team focus on the one top match - a strategy that proved to be very effective in this case."
Building a family tree from the critical third cousin match took researchers back to Mendelson’s great-great-grandparents, and from there they researched the descendants of those 16 people until they found a few important clues. One of those descendants, Mitchell Mendelson, was in the right place within the family tree, had lived in Elizabethtown, and also matched the gender, age, religion, and physical characteristics of the John Doe.
"We were fortunate that the closest DNA relative to our John Doe was a genealogy buff and family historian who had done a very comprehensive and accurate family tree," said volunteer investigative genetic genealogist Rich Capen.
Mendelson was a columnist for the Birmingham Post Herald in Alabama, and appeared on an episode of The Alabama Experience on public television in 1992. It’s unclear what drew him back north to Elizabethtown. He was about 60 years old when he died.
Republished courtesy of DNA Doe Project