Credit: Ohio AG
Human remains found near an oil well in a remote field near Canton in 2001 have now been identified as Anthony Bernard Gulley, a young man authorities believe was murdered in 1994.
Two men cutting firewood about 200 yards from a county road made a grisly discovery on Dec. 22, 2001. Skeletal remains, bleached by exposure, may have been in the field since it was last plowed in 1996. No clothing, jewelry, or identification were found with the remains. The initial assessment by the county coroner and a forensic anthropologist concluded that the remains belonged to an African American woman, between the ages of 22-31, and about 5”7” tall. DNA analysis would show that the unknown person was in fact male.
The same month that Gulley went missing, detectives from the Akron Police Department had been on the lookout for a 22-year-old man from Michigan named George Frederick Washington, who had childhood ties to Akron. Washington was a suspect in two rapes and an armed robbery, and investigators also suspected him in the disappearance of Gulley, whose burned car was found in Akron on Sept. 12.
Detectives surmised that Washington might have returned to the Akron area to dispose of Gulley’s body. They would never find out. On Sept. 30, 2001, Washington died by suicide as law enforcement officers attempted to take him into custody. The search for Gulley’s body continued, but was unsuccessful.
Seven years later, on Dec. 22, 2001, skeletonized remains of a man who came to be known as Stark County John Doe, now identified as Gulley, were found near the oil well. Investigators worked to identify the remains, but without the advanced DNA technology available today, the identity of the man was illusive.
On Sept. 7, 2023, in an effort to solicit tips from the public, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Stark County Sheriff’s Office unveiled a clay facial reconstruction of the man. Investigators also partnered with Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design to create digital images of what the John Doe might have looked like.
In addition to the public appeal, BCI’s forensic scientists were working behind the scenes to obtain a DNA profile from the remains. Although a profile was developed, it did not match any identities known to law enforcement through CODIS.
Investigators then solicited the help of the DNA Doe Project. The case would spend 9 months in the lab pipeline before genetic genealogy research was launched, but it would take only 24 hours to find the name - Anthony Bernard Gulley.
“Sometimes the DNA relatives are all distant but we luck out with good records,” said team leader Margaret Press, who co-founded DNA Doe Project in 2017. “Sometimes the opposite is true, as was the case this time. Despite those challenges, the team pulled through.”
"We discovered that the assumed murderer of Anthony Gulley killed himself when confronted by the police," said Taed Wynnell, one of the investigative genetic genealogists who worked on the case during a weekend retreat in Texas. "Oftentimes the murder investigation doesn't begin until after we identify the victim, so this was a surprise to our team."
Gulley’s family had been left without knowing where he was, or even if he was actually deceased.
“We are so glad Anthony Gulley's family now has answers,” Press said. “Our hearts go out to them.”
The answers to when and how he died—and why his body ended up in Canton only to be discovered seven years later—likely died with Washington in 1994.
Gulley is the second John Doe identified in recent years through collaboration between BCI, the Stark County Sheriff’s Office, the Stark County Coroner’s Office and the DNA Doe Project. A John Doe, whose body was found in March 2020, was identified in July 2024 as Michael Leach.
Republished with information from Ohio AG and DNA Doe Project.