Credit: NamUs
On April 8, 1992, the Oswego County (NY) Sheriff’s Office responded to a body that had washed up on the shore of Lake Ontario, near what is now the Novelis Plant. The remains were badly decomposed and mostly skeletal. According to the Medical Examiner’s office, the individual had died between 6 months and 5 years prior to the discovery of the body. At the time, efforts to identify the remains by comparing them to missing person cases were unsuccessful. In 2008, a DNA profile of the remains was uploaded to the CODIS database without generating any additional leads.
In April 2022, the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office renewed efforts to identify the remains, and the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario was contacted to begin to compare with unsolved cases in Canada. At this time, Detective Constable Sara Mummery entered the case and she assisted with obtaining a new DNA sample from the remains for further comparison in the Lake Ontario area in both the United States and Canada.
In February 2024, the new DNA sample was found to be a familial match to DNA collected from family members of Vincent C. Stack, who was from Buffalo, NY. Stack went missing in the Niagara Falls State Park on or around Dec. 4, 1990, and was believed to have gone over the falls. Over the following year and 4 months, his remains would have traveled approximately 15 miles to the mouth of the river, and then over 130 miles across Lake Ontario before being discovered on the shore just outside the city of Oswego.
Stack's family was notified of the identification in person by the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office. The Oswego County Sheriff’s Office would like to thank NamUS Regional Program Specialist Brian Nisbet and Detective Constable Sara Mummery of the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario. They assisted in obtaining additional DNA samples and were a driving force in bringing closure in this case and other missing person cases. Detective Constable Mummery is actively working on a multitude of missing person and unidentified remains cases in the Lake Ontario area.
The Oswego County Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating a similar unidentified remains case from 1983 and hopes to find a resolution in this case through renewed efforts as well.
Republished courtesy of Oswego County Sheriff’s Office