With the help of DNA Doe Project, unidentified remains discovered on Feb. 18, 1982, have now been identified as Frank “Frankie” Little, Jr., a guitarist who once played with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame R&B group the O’Jays.
Forty years ago, Little’s partial remains were recovered in a garbage bag in a wooded area behind a business in Twinsburg, Ohio. He had been stabbed, beaten and burned body, and investigators at the time believed he had been dead for several years before his body was discovered.
Although investigators were able to determine the remains belonged to that of a Black male, 20 to 35 years of age, approximately 5’6” tall, with possible adolescent kyphosis (a curvature of the spine), they were unsuccessful in identifying the victim.
The remains became the oldest stored at the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office in Akron, Ohio until Twinsburg Police detective Eric Hendershott reached out to DNA Doe Project (DDP) for help in December 2018.
According to DDP, the DNA profile it uploaded to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA generated no close family matches, but did identify Laurens County, South Carolina as a possible location of the deceased’s relatives.
DDP genealogists then constructed over 70 family trees while trying to narrow a list of more than 4,000 distant matches.
“Right out of the gate, the two top matches had unknown paternity,” said DDP team leader L. Elias Chan. “Eventually, we were able to tease out important family groups that intersected with Twinsburg John Doe’s. From those, we began to systematically look for people to volunteer to upload to GEDmatch or FTDNA with the hope of narrowing the family groups further.”
Finally, the team tracked down Margaret O'Sullivan, one of Little's cousins form Cleveland, where he was born and raised and possibly lived out the last of his life. O'Sullivan was able to provide information about Little, and then a brother in Georgia provided a DNA sample that was confirmed by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation Crime Lab and Lisa Kohler with the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office as a sibling relation to Little.
After identification, Kohler declared the ongoing case a homicide.
“Part of the mystery is over with, but we have no idea how he got there, how he disappeared or where he lived toward the end of his life,” Hendershott told the Associated Press.
Little was born in 1943 in Cleveland, where he stayed until he joined The O’Jays in California in the mid-1960s as a guitarist and song writer. Band members say he didn’t stay long before returning to Ohio for love. After Little returned, however, not much is known about his whereabouts. Investigators believe he was last alive in the mid-1970s, living in Cleveland. He had a daughter who passed away in 2012, and a son who has not yet been located or identified, police said.
Eddie Levert, the lead singer of the O'Jays, told News5 Cleveland that Little was sentimental, loving and passionate.
"He could have been a great entity in the music business, but he was in love and love drove him back to Cleveland," Levert said. "I never would have thought this would happen to him. I don't know why anyone would do him like that.”
Video: The 1966 hit Pretty Words was written by Little and Levert. Photo: Clay model from unidentified remains by Samantha Molnar, Ohio BCI, on the left, Little’s school photo on the right. Credit: TPD.