Jerry Harrison.Photo:TBI Media
TBI Media
A John Doe has been identified nearly four decades after his skeletal remains were found along an abandoned trail in Tennessee.
In a statement on June 7, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that genealogical DNA testing has confirmed the identity of the previously unknown murder victim as Jerry Harrison, of Little Rock, Ark., who last contacted his family in 1982 — when he was around the age of 25 — after he began traveling across the country.
“After exhausting all leads, investigators could not determine the victim’s identity, and he was classified as a John Doe,” the statement reads. The case soon went cold.
In Sept. 2015, the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center submitted a sample of the man’s remains to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for DNA testing in an effort to identify him, according to the statement. His DNA profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
Nearly seven years later, in December 2022, investigators were able to identify possible relatives connected to the victim after agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation submitted a sample of the man’s remains to a private lab based in Texas for forensic genetic genealogical DNA testing.
“A TBI intelligence analyst used that information to locate potential family members in Arkansas,” the statement reads. “Agents made contact with two of those individuals and confirmed they had a brother they had not heard from in more than four decades.”
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“With the assistance of the Hot Springs Police Department and Pine Bluff Police Department in Arkansas, agents were able to obtain familial DNA standards for possible siblings of the man, which were submitted to the TBI Crime Lab in Knoxville for entry into CODIS,” the statement continues.
Now, agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are asking for the public’s help in providing information that may help find Harrison’s killer, and crack this cold case once and for all.
Anyone with information about the homicide case, specifically any knowledge about people Harrison may have been with before his death, is asked to call 1-800-TBI-FIND.
source: people.com
