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GameChanger [Music] [Music] n welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always ladies and gentlemen it's a guy that has zero regrettable tattoos
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here is the captain not true I have a moose mowing grass on me ass it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks
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Stitcher premium and that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
00:03:27
talk some true crime [Music] [Music] a 31-year-old murder case is getting fresh attention tonight Kentucky State
00:04:07
Police call at the case of the man with no hands now this is a rendering of what
00:04:12
the man might look like now detectives are turning to DNA experts in hopes that it will unearth some new leads Walter
00:04:18
Smith Rend off is here after talking to investigators Walter what did they say well Paul and Kyle technology has
00:04:24
changed immensely since this man was found dead in a barn back in 1989 invest tigators hope running his DNA through
00:04:31
genetic systems will give them the answers they've been searching for 31 years have come and gone with no answers
00:04:38
Kentucky State Police want to know who this man is he was found dead with his hands cut off in a Tobacco Barn near Dry
00:04:45
Ridge this is what police told us back in 2017 when the body was exhumed he deserved to go back home his family
00:04:53
deserved to to know where he was I mean he was buried in in Grant County in a Popper's grave with no no headstone back
00:05:01
in 2017 DNA was taken and entered into a federal database but since then genealogy sites like 23 and me and
00:05:08
ancestry have emerged that's why KSP is taking a closer look technology has come
00:05:13
so far um and it's it it makes our job a little bit easier and you know bottom of
00:05:20
the line is is we want to solve these cases and we want to um bring Justice where Justice is served the DNA do
00:05:28
project will now build a Family Tree in hopes of tracking down relatives of the John do it is a very uh peculiar and
00:05:35
just an odd case um you know just the whole circumstance surrounding it and it's why it's been so difficult for us
00:05:42
to to be able to uh make Headway police have previously thought this case may be
00:05:47
connected to the Mob besides this digitally enhanced picture police don't have much to go on since the hands were
00:05:53
removed that's why they're hoping new DNA technology will be the break they need in this case it seems like as we
00:06:00
get technological advances some of these old cases we may in fact uh solve more of
00:06:07
[Music] these on Sunday afternoon April 9th 1989 around 2:45 in the afternoon farmer
00:06:27
CW Adams known as Billy walked into his large barn Adams was a tobacco farmer in
00:06:35
Dry Ridge Kentucky in rural Grant County his farm was located on Route 22 this is
00:06:42
the main road through Dry Ridge called Main Street which runs north to south through the town of Williamstown to Dry
00:06:50
Ridge about four miles apart and in Dry Ridge it turns West and heads out of town into very rural pasture and
00:06:58
farmland and overhead view using Google Maps shows nothing but fields and farmland for miles and miles on either
00:07:06
side of this part of Route 22 this even today captain in 2021 it was out there that farmer Adams
00:07:15
Barn sat on the roadside in 1989 neither Dry Ridge nor Williamstown is exactly Cosmopolitan Dry Ridge is a rural town
00:07:26
with the population in 2010 of just 2100 people located in Grant County ironically although it's named Dry Ridge
00:07:36
the area is known for its mineral water wells which allegedly have healing powers Williamstown is a bit larger with
00:07:44
the population of nearly 4,000 in 2010 it serves as the County Seat but we are still talking about tiny towns that are
00:07:53
off of the beaten path however the Williamstown Dry Ridge downtown area areas are right off of a major
00:08:01
Interstate this is Interstate 75 one of the longest highways in the United States from this area Captain this
00:08:10
general area that we're talking about you could be in Cincinnati in approximately 40 minutes so here we have
00:08:18
farmer Adams who utilizes This Barn for his tobacco Harvest it's quite a large barn the kind made out of old gray
00:08:27
Barnwood boards unfortunately we do not know exactly what happened when he walked into this Barn at 2:45 p.m. on
00:08:36
April 9th and it's never been discussed at all how he found what he found we also don't know when was the last time
00:08:46
that he was inside of this barn and that is a question for obvious reasons that has significant implications given what
00:08:55
Adams was about to find now in the barn Adams found a stack of of items these would be typical items he expected to
00:09:02
find inside of this Barn in a pile but he did not expect to find them in this pile and it was extremely puzzling to
00:09:12
him so he starts removing these items from this pile pulling items from the pile returning them to their intended
00:09:20
locations and then he stopped because under this pile was the body of a large man the large man was naked with no
00:09:30
clothing nearby and Adams could tell that there was no rush to call the paramedics one look at him told him that
00:09:39
this man was beyond help he was dead and had been dead for quite some time the call to the Kentucky State Police came
00:09:48
in at 2:50 p.m. and officers arrived on the scene at 3:15 that afternoon well like you said this is roughly 40 45
00:09:57
minutes away from Cincinnati there's so so many rural areas around these parts it' be a perfect place to dump a victim
00:10:05
yes you're exactly right captain and for me that's what makes it even more confusing as to why the barn was
00:10:10
utilized in the first place but the people out there that are familiar with this story now this is one of our lesser
00:10:17
known stories that we're covering this week but there will be people in the greater Cincinnati area and in the state
00:10:23
of Kentucky that have probably heard of this case before again it's 30 years old
00:10:30
we are trying to identify this homicide victim and the Kentucky State Police have done a good job of keeping this
00:10:38
case in the news throughout the years it's never really made national news though so a lot of people will be
00:10:44
hearing this for the first time but those of you familiar with this case you're probably sitting at home or in
00:10:50
your car or in your garage going wait a second I thought that this guy when they
00:10:54
found him in that Tobacco Barn that he was hanging inside the barn and there are several news articles that
00:11:01
say that that in fact was what was going on but guess what it's simply not true the hanging part of this story is All a
00:11:09
fallacy it never happened at all here is what we know to be true the Kentucky State Police the agency in charge of
00:11:19
this case has released very little information about the whole situation they are honing in on this
00:11:26
case and have been for the last couple of years because new technology is making it a situation where they think
00:11:32
they can identify this guy sooner rather than later so this is very much an active case for the Kentucky State
00:11:40
Police and kudos to them for keeping it not just active in the news and media but also active on their desk right and
00:11:49
an active investigation as far as they're concerned yeah they are fully charged and fully invested in
00:11:57
identifying this homicide victim you can tell by the title of this case that it doesn't need any more hype but you see
00:12:05
that from time to time and different cases where the legend of the case becomes a little more grandiose yes and
00:12:15
this will be a case where we will learn some more information throughout the years today there's still not a lot
00:12:23
known about this case and early on that was certainly the case because the early
00:12:27
articles in state ments about the man found in the barn all say consistently at first that it was not apparent what
00:12:34
had killed this man later they would tell us what in fact killed the man that they found in the barn now early on
00:12:42
though Captain this is because the body itself was very badly decomposed his face was described as not recognizable
00:12:50
due to the level of breakdown of the facial tissues he was estimated to have been dead for at least a week probably
00:12:59
two but the medical examiner was able to determine that the cause of death was two gunshot wounds to the back of the
00:13:07
head his hands had been cut off the wounds to the lower arms at the wrist level indicated to the experienced
00:13:16
medical examiner that the man's hands had been deliberately severed and the hands weren't anywhere to be found in
00:13:22
fact to this very day they have never been located the Kentucky State Police has never revealed any information about
00:13:31
the investigation that took place at the location where the man was found meaning
00:13:36
they've investigated the barn the barn owner the property owners but we don't know what that all entailed and what
00:13:45
their findings were in regard to the barn the barn owner and such we do know that they executed a thorough search of
00:13:54
the barn and the surrounding areas as one would expect in fact we were able to get our hands on the incident report
00:14:01
that indicates that the barn was cleared after 7 hours or so hat to be Captain Obvious but they took the victim's hands
00:14:10
so it'd be harder to identify the victim yes and as we said captain no clothing was found the man in the barn was naked
00:14:17
no clothes no jewelry nothing the man's missing hands were nowhere to be seen well obviously the hands would have
00:14:25
fingerprints and so you could look into a database of those take the jewelry those would be
00:14:32
identifiers take the clothes that would be another identifier shoes even would be identifier and we've seen in some
00:14:39
cases too where people remove Cut skin to remove tattoos which would be identifiers as well according to the
00:14:48
Kentucky State Police and these are their words that Echo what you just said here Captain quote someone had
00:14:54
physically removed them from his arms talking about the hands continuing on they say fingerprints were a large part
00:15:02
of technology in that time we still utilize it today but they they were very limited the implication was that whoever
00:15:10
had cut off the man's hands did so in order to keep his identity a secret and so far here we sit all these years later
00:15:19
and it has worked well when you read the description of this man one thing that jumps out is he's
00:15:26
65 that means he's very tall so when I heard that it's very surprising that he has not been identified I agree captain
00:15:37
and that sets off some red flags for me because here we are more than 30 years later the man with no
00:15:44
hands no identifying personal possessions or marks and with no recognizable facial
00:15:52
features were sitting here going who the man in the barn was remains a mystery and all investigators had to go on to
00:16:00
identify him was that limited physical description of his remains which is as follows age they put his age
00:16:10
approximately in his 30s generally believed to be somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 years of age he's described as
00:16:19
a white male height 6' 5 in tall and they even break that down saying 77 in I've seen some descriptions captain that
00:16:29
have the victim listed at 64 uh but most generally say 65 220b and as you said that's a key factor
00:16:41
in this case here just let that sink in for a bit this guy was 6' 5 in that is an exceptionally large human being a
00:16:51
missing person's report of a missing man of that size would be fairly easy to connect to a victim right but we can
00:17:00
tell you that although this physical description of the Grant County John Doe as some have called him has been entered
00:17:08
into namus and the DNA do project databases and his case information is listed in vicap and NCC he has never
00:17:19
been identified and it is believed by the investigators and I share that opinion as well that there is
00:17:27
no missing persons report rep that was ever filed on him and if there was it's never been able to be a report that the
00:17:35
Kentucky State Police have been able to get their hands on or their eyeballs on because 6'5 there's not a ton of people
00:17:44
that meet that requirement a couple things one this individual could have no family members maybe was an only child
00:17:51
maybe his parents died younger or possibly he's from a very small town from a a lot further away than around
00:18:01
let's say the Kentucky SL Cincinnati area and so if he went missing in like Washington State or something in a very
00:18:10
small town maybe they're not connecting the dots that their son that maybe that their son ended up in a barn in Kentucky
00:18:19
let's see what else we know about this guy from a physical standpoint uh his head still had plenty of hair on it
00:18:26
enough to tell investigators that he wore short and tight basically his hair was in a crew cut with short
00:18:33
well-maintained sideburns as for ey color that is listed in every source that I've been able to
00:18:40
see States unknown this seems likely because after death circulation of oxygen to the eyes and frankly
00:18:47
everywhere else ceases so the pupils dilate and the cornea becomes opaque the eyes obtain a distinct blue white Haze
00:18:57
over their surf surface which can obscure the true eye color of the deceased individual in any event Grant
00:19:06
County John Doe his eyes are of unknown color so that does not help to identify him well this report says he's 65 white
00:19:17
man around 220 lbs with brown hair and brown eyes there is an FBI vicap alert poster relating to the Grant County John
00:19:27
Doe which contains more information about his appearance besides the estimated height and weight and brown
00:19:34
hair the poster notes that the Grant County John do also has a previously healed broken nose and if you go to
00:19:42
fbi.gov click on the vicap tab there you'll be able to find a list of unidentified remains that they have
00:19:53
listed on the FBI website the victim also had something that I'm not going to try to pronounce here not in the garage
00:20:03
I'm never going to try to pronounce a captain I'm going to spell it out it's p l a g i o c e p h a l y so this is also
00:20:15
known as Flathead syndrome per the Stanford Health Website this is not something that is
00:20:23
genetic but can be caused by a few different things one is a muscle tightness on one side of the neck so
00:20:32
when the person is a baby they prefer holding the head to one side or in one position while lying down which then
00:20:40
results in that side of the head flattening over time it could be a result of prematurity you know we have
00:20:49
skull bones that are softer than full term babies and they tend to move their heads less often again the head would
00:20:57
flatten while lying in the same position for long amounts of time it also could be a result of inudo crowding this can
00:21:06
occur when there are twins or multiples or if the mother has large FIB boids or an abnormally shaped uterus so it's not
00:21:18
super likely Captain but given that information there's a possibility that R John Doe may have a twin out there or
00:21:28
had a twin at one time yeah you can actually get a plastic surgery for this condition this is also when you hear
00:21:35
about doctors wanting to put a baby into a helmet that's normally because this condition is getting worse and they can
00:21:42
correct it by having the child wear a helmet for a certain period of time now there's two kind of versions of this one
00:21:51
where the back of the head is flat and where the head is misshaped it seems like his version is the one where your
00:21:59
head would be flat on an area but not on the back of the head so caused in his skull to be like misshaped but we're not
00:22:06
doctors we're just two dumb guys that sniff gasoline in the garage so of course we have no idea which of these
00:22:14
factors are the case here for our man with no hands but the key thing is to know that this would be an identifier
00:22:23
for somebody out there his skull was flattened enough to be noted on the physical description of him utilized by
00:22:30
law enforcement and missing persons organizations the Kentucky State Police have said quote he had a particularly
00:22:39
shaped head a flat head the back of his head was flat that's specific if someone
00:22:44
is trying to identify him end quote again I can't get over the fact that nobody's identified this individual when
00:22:52
he's 6' 5 in tall you have to wonder Captain if the person or person which I think is probably more likely
00:23:00
persons responsible for leaving him in this Barn if they knew that he would in fact be identified by fingerprints not
00:23:09
everybody out there walking around on this planet or in this country or even the state of Kentucky have been
00:23:17
fingerprinted right you have to have those fingerprints on file somewhere to have something to match them to now you
00:23:25
wonder would these would the perpetrator here know or have suspicion to believe that he would be would have been
00:23:33
fingerprinted at some point either because he was arrested or locked up or there are many jobs that require you to
00:23:42
go and get fingerprinted or a thorough background check to be able to work in that position or work with that company
00:23:52
I can't find it in the reports that I've looked at but was there a toxicology report done
00:23:58
my guess is yes um but we don't have that information they're keeping that information to themselves well hang on
00:24:06
just a minute here Captain because we have something else that could help with possibly identifying this individual so
00:24:14
we have what they State this is the final piece I would say of the physical description of our John Doe it's said he
00:24:22
had distinctive dental work so according to the FBI it was expensive and extensive specifically when our victim
00:24:34
was alive he had a quote Perfect Smile the dental work included a 10un porcelain fixed porcelain to Metal
00:24:44
Bridge with missing teeth replaced with porcelain pontics I believe is how you say that this is a word that I had not
00:24:52
heard before but thanks to uh an internet search I know that pontic is an artificial tooth attached to a fixed
00:25:01
Dental prosthesis basically it's a fake tooth that looks real and looks really good and it's permanently attached there
00:25:11
is something else that we know and you were dancing on this Captain is that we know how he died as we said that the
00:25:20
shots that killed this individual were two to the back of the head and one thing that they have leas is that it
00:25:28
came from a 22 caliber weapon so to recap real quick we have a John Doe that was found naked in a barn on Kentucky
00:25:38
Route 22 outside of Dry Ridge Kentucky John do was found shot in the back of the head capped twice execution Style
00:25:46
with a 22 his hands were cut off to evade identification he was hidden under a bunch of barn items or things that would
00:25:55
be stored in this Barn he had had a broken nose and his teeth had been replaced at some point with pricey fakes
00:26:03
he had a crew cut and he was a very large man 6' 5 in tall 220 lb [Music] [Music]
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Captain it makes you wonder when the when the dental surgery was done mhm because maybe again like I said this guy
00:28:55
has family members maybe they passed on maybe he had some dental issues and then had
00:29:02
them recently taken care of and and so he would have been the one responsible for this if it was done when he was a
00:29:08
little bit younger that makes you wonder if somebody cared so much about him to make sure that he had a perfect
00:29:15
smile you you would think somebody wouldd be coming out of the woodwork saying that's my son or or that's my
00:29:21
brother or whoever it is that's where we come in and we try to help the Kentucky
00:29:25
State Police because like I said said I couldn't find a situation where this is nationally known news or information
00:29:34
yeah it's on fbi.gov it's on some other websites and if you go search around the
00:29:39
internet you're going to find information on this case or little news Clips but this is not something that I
00:29:46
think everybody was aware of and when you have a situation where this guy very likely is not from anywhere near the
00:29:54
immediate area if the right information doesn't hit the right person's earballs or eyeballs then we have a situation
00:30:02
where they can't go well that was my son or that was my brother or whomever now the other thing too that's difficult is
00:30:10
we Circle back to a missing person's report right why don't we have a missing person's report of somebody that's this
00:30:16
height and this weight again it's it's not normal for people to be this large and my mind starts to go to the idea of
00:30:26
well maybe this guy did originate from this country and is there a chance that he wasn't here very long before whatever
00:30:34
happened to him happened right right this homicide for whatever reason went down is there a chance that he wasn't
00:30:40
here very long and Mom and Dad brother and sister or any of his close relatives are just simply not in this country to
00:30:48
to say that he's missing maybe they've told whomever someplace else we've not heard from him we've not heard from our
00:30:55
son or our brother or our cousin in all these years and so I'm sure they're worried about what has happened to him
00:31:01
and that's why the Kentucky State Police want so badly to identify him for a multitude of reasons one to tell his
00:31:11
family hey we found we got bad news but we found your loved one furthermore we want to seek some justice for this guy
00:31:20
we have no idea who the suspects can be when we don't even know who the victim is now one piece of information that has
00:31:28
been disclosed that I find to be very interesting is that the Kentucky State Police has stated publicly that the man
00:31:34
found in the barn was killed elsewhere we don't know because they've not given us the details of such how they
00:31:41
determined this but we can deduce that they were probably able to determine that he was not shot in the barn because
00:31:48
there was no gunshot spatter there was no shells there was no residue or large amounts of blood found in the barn
00:31:56
itself right so that seems pretty pretty simple but presumably if none of this is
00:32:05
found it's telling investigators that the murder and mutilation did not go down in the barn and again this is
00:32:12
interesting because remember he's a large man if he was already dead when he was placed in this Tobacco Barn as
00:32:20
opposed to being forced to walk into the barn and then being shot then it would almost certainly have required two
00:32:26
people to transport him in a vehicle and then move the body into the barn right it's
00:32:32
my opinion I think it's safe to say that this was likely a Twan job if not more I
00:32:39
don't see how look Captain you are a specimen you are a physical specimen Adonis uh and I do not see how one
00:32:47
person even of your strength could have possibly moved a 220 lb dead weight well
00:32:54
you have to lift with your legs that distance to the Bone well when they mentioned that it could possibly be mob
00:33:00
related I I'd also throw out the idea of maybe a cartel or something because now
00:33:06
go with me on this Theory it it might be a little far-fetched but if you look at
00:33:11
the distance between Williamstown and Portsmith Ohio Portsmith Ohio for a long time has been
00:33:19
a kind of a hub to have opioids and and other drugs and they channel from Portsmith to Cincinnati to Columbus for
00:33:31
example and so if you were heading from Portsmith to Cincinnati and something happened once you shoot off one of those
00:33:39
main roads you would find Williamstown it's interesting to me that they mention Mafia or mention the mob do you
00:33:49
think that's just because of the severed hands I think that the severed hands certainly has something to do with it
00:33:55
but I think that there's probably a lot of factors and I'm with you I don't I think that they're using the the term
00:34:01
mob related and again I want I want to be clear to everybody out there in listener land they're saying possibly
00:34:08
they're not locked in or married to this idea that it has to be mob related but I
00:34:12
feel like mob is a bit of a blanketed statement that could mean any cartel any kind of organization working on the down
00:34:22
low organized crime it could be related to that why again you got to go back to the fact that this guy does not appear
00:34:28
to have been reported missing at any time it looks like whoever is responsible for this they either a knew
00:34:37
what they were doing or B did a really good job doing it for the first time well this is definitely one of the cases
00:34:44
that we've covered and maybe top of the list where when I see the picture that they've done of this victim how lifelike
00:34:54
it is I believe if we can get enough listeners to share this story and to share his
00:35:03
picture all over the Internet somebody will come forward and identify this man after 30 years of not being identified
00:35:12
well and that's why I wanted to feature this case and feature it for the Kentucky State Police because again they
00:35:19
are very much invested in finding out who this individual was and I think that Captain maybe we can push this story a
00:35:27
little further than what they've been able to do in their years of hard work and effort but I think maybe we might
00:35:35
have the ability to reach some more people at a greater distance that they've been able to reach I will be
00:35:41
taking his image and put it on our Instagram Twitter Facebook at True Crime garage it will also be front and center
00:35:52
on our website at true Crim garage.com now it's never been published what the exact address or location of
00:36:00
the barn was all the reports simply say that it's located about 7 and 1 12 miles
00:36:06
west of Dry Ridge Kentucky and the police report that we were able to get our hands on which it's a very limited
00:36:13
report it's a single page says that the victim was found inside a Tobacco Barn on skill Croft Sheet Metal incorporated
00:36:22
Farm property located on Kentucky Route 22 72 Mi west of dryridge now we were able to do a little further digging and
00:36:34
confirm the exact location of the barn so it's located at 8100 Taft Highway if you follow Route 22 on the map West from
00:36:45
Dry Ridge you can see the rural nature of the location of this large out building it seems unlikely even almost
00:36:54
impossible that some someone from out of town would stumble on this location and
00:37:02
select this one Barn in the middle of nowhere at random as a reporter on local 12tv news station pointed out quote
00:37:11
whoever killed this John Doe went to a lot of trouble to hide his dead body he wasn't killed at the barn so someone
00:37:19
likely drove Interstate 75 south or Interstate 75 North took the Dry Ridge at exit and drove 7 miles out of town to
00:37:29
pick out the barn I directed horror films I would use tobacco Barns and all my movies I think they're absolutely creepy
00:37:39
looking they almost look like there's a like bats like big humanized bats or like the moth man is like hanging upside
00:37:49
down if you don't know what a Tobacco Barn looks like the first time you see one in person it it can shake you up
00:37:59
like what is that and once they explain it to you obviously it makes a lot more sense but it really looks like almost
00:38:08
these giant bats are hanging from the ceiling yeah tobacco leaves are large and nobody really likes bats but
00:38:16
you do not want to encounter a large group of really big ones right or moth men right and so yeah I've never been
00:38:26
person been inside of a real life Tobacco Barn but I've seen them on TV and seen the
00:38:31
tobacco leaves hanging from the rafters and I get a good idea of what you're talking about here Captain yeah the
00:38:39
first time I came across when I was going on to my buddy's farm land and I parked the car and it was it just became
00:38:47
dark and all you could see is these things in the barn kind of swaying back and forth and from a distance I was like
00:38:56
are those bats or birds or or maybe even like deer carcasses just hanging like I
00:39:03
I couldn't tell what they were uh from that distance and like I said in the dark here's the thing for me and while
00:39:09
we're on the subject of the barn TV images of This Barn show that it is a very large out building it's very close
00:39:17
to the road in fact I would say almost right next to the road yeah it's not far the road is a small two-lane roadway
00:39:26
winding through the countryside and pasture land if someone was looking for a structure to place the body in well
00:39:34
then this Barn would kind of just jump out at you gotcha because it's very visible but to me that begs the question
00:39:43
why inside of the barn and why this Barn there are plenty there's plenty of land
00:39:50
around there hundreds of thousands of Acres where a body might never be found and look take this an extra step here
00:39:59
clearly when they're removing the hands they don't want their victim to be identified why because identification of
00:40:07
this victim probably leads the authorities directly to the killer or Killers would be my guess and I'm
00:40:14
guessing captain that Kentucky State Police that's why they're holding back so much information in this case because
00:40:20
they know that or believe that to be true as well so why if you're so concerned about this
00:40:29
man the victim being identified why Place him in a barn and then pile up a bunch of barn [ __ ] on top
00:40:35
of this guy why wouldn't you take him out in the middle of nowhere and bury him you know what I mean it seems to me
00:40:42
like that would be more likely or do we have a situation where there is reason that he was in that Barn that it has
00:40:51
something to do with with persons close to the perpetrator or the perpetrators themselves again we know that the owner
00:40:59
Barn owner property owner everybody was looked at and investigated but we don't know what the finding or the results of
00:41:06
that in investigation was well a couple things here were they trying to frame somebody or cast suspicion on somebody
00:41:14
else I get what you know I'm picking up what you're putting down but we're also again there's they're saying 220 he
00:41:21
might have been a little heavier but he's a big boy like you said it's close to the road
00:41:26
if you have two individuals we can put him in this Barn try to conceal him that's going to give us a little extra
00:41:34
time taking his clothes severing the hands this is going to give us even more time but how far would they be able to
00:41:43
carry this individual MH from their car to this land I mean because if you just bury them in the middle of a a field the
00:41:51
farmer is going to see that he's going to say well what the hell happened here so maybe they thought by put him in the
00:41:58
barn that's close to the road we can conceal him because a lot of times when we we have these victims that can be
00:42:05
identified very quickly they're discarded on the side of the road like trash and in an open field for somebody
00:42:13
to come along and identify that it's even a body quickly well and I'm putting down what you're picking up here Captain
00:42:20
so after the autopsy was done on our John Doe he was buried in an UNM marked grave and dry Rich where he was say
00:42:29
buried for the next 28 years now in 2017 there was a renewed push to identify him
00:42:37
a sketch of his face was done by a forensic artist now this is not the the sketch that you're going to see when you
00:42:43
come to True Crim garage.com because there's been advancements on the sketch the original sketch was prepared in 2009
00:42:53
and this showed what his face was estimated to have look like before it was decomposed now that black and white
00:43:01
image showed a man with a smile very straight white teeth prominent cheekbones and a crew cut it's a
00:43:06
distinctive face in that sketch but it's a drawing it's so it it doesn't really look like anyone real to me it was in
00:43:15
2016 that a computer AED image the one that you will see when you go to True Crime
00:43:21
garage.com was prepared and this was based on bone structure of are John Doe so this is a digitally enhanced image
00:43:29
that looks much more like a black and white photograph right it shows a more menacing looking man some have said with
00:43:38
a very square jaw a broad face and broken nose notably reports accompanying the release of this sketch included that
00:43:48
the John Doe had brown eyes like you pointed out there captain and that was the first to my knowledge that they were
00:43:56
indicating what they beli the eye color of this man was so obviously when they find a man with no hands I mean that
00:44:06
perks the ears up right mhm what what about more of this urban legend of of him being him hanging from the barn yeah
00:44:15
that was kind of the story in the beginning and it seems like that story has survived a little bit over the
00:44:22
decades that have passed that when his body was located he was found hanging inside the barn which we pointed out at
00:44:29
the top of the show is just frankly not true and we know this based off of again
00:44:35
Kentucky State Police they're holding a lot of information close to the vest here and kudos to them because I think
00:44:40
they're going to identify this guy sooner rather than later so I don't blame them for doing so and they were
00:44:47
very helpful when we reached out to them they basically said look we can answer a
00:44:50
couple questions but we can't go into great detail on some of the things that we know
00:44:56
they did confirm however that he was not hanging in the barn they did confirm that the one report that we found that
00:45:02
said he was inside the barn found underneath a pile of barn type items right that that is in fact true that and
00:45:12
I don't know what these items were there's no description ever given I don't know if these are seed sacks or
00:45:17
hay bales or or what have you or Farming tools nut sacks could be any number of things including lots of nut sacks but
00:45:26
they were able to confirm that for us so thank you to the Kentucky State Police now well hold on a second because this
00:45:33
individual was shot twice in the head yes so if he was hanging to me you're trying to make a statement right but he
00:45:42
he wasn't he simply wasn't right he was which makes sense because you would not take that
00:45:49
individual's you would not sever his hands if you're trying to make a statement because you'd want people
00:45:56
to know that you did this to this individual uhhuh to me that that would make the most sense if if this
00:46:03
individual was shot and then they went through the trouble to hang him from the ra Rafters in a Tobacco Barn it's to
00:46:11
make a statement and so the fact that they try to cover up this individual to me it's again just another step to cover
00:46:20
up his identity and like you said that's probably going to lead them to his killer his identity is probably going to
00:46:27
lead him to somebody that is going to stick out like a sore thumb it's even I mean the the placement of the body makes
00:46:34
zero sense to me not that see it doesn't doesn't make zero sense to me not that it shouldn't not that it should make any
00:46:41
sense to me but the thing is like why Place him in the barn if you do why go to the extra effort of piling all these
00:46:48
items on top of him it's not like whoever's going entering the barn isn't just going to clear all those items and
00:46:55
find him now as back to your original question hold on the the other thing about the Tobacco Barn is there's a
00:47:03
definite smell from tobacco so maybe maybe they thought if we put him in this barn and we put some stuff over him look
00:47:11
we all know buddies that have like big Barns and they know every item in that barn and where it was moved in the last
00:47:20
time it was moved so I think maybe they thought okay the tobacco smell will help
00:47:25
cover C up the decaying body we we put some stuff onto him to con conceal him and maybe it's months before he's found
00:47:35
because I mean you did say his face was badly decomposed mhm so that makes me wonder what well was he killed somewhere
00:47:43
else and left somewhere else for a while and then they moved the body or was the
00:47:48
decomposition done with inside that Tobacco Barn that's a great question and that's why at the top of the show I
00:47:54
brought up the fact of we don't know the last time that this CW Adams went into the barn that would be really
00:48:02
interesting to know number one and again it would be interesting to know people were probably scratching their heads
00:48:07
going why does the colonel care so much it would be interesting to know what items were piled on top of this John do
00:48:14
because again I would think it would be it would just be even more obvious to the individual entering the barn that
00:48:21
hey there's something there these items have been moved where you could again we're kind of speculating and spinning
00:48:29
our tires here I just wonder if you could have delayed the discovery of John Doe even further by just placing him in
00:48:36
a dark corner somewhere in this barn but as you pointed out so astutely there we
00:48:42
don't know it could be the fact that this guy was placed in there relatively quickly after he was killed and just not
00:48:50
discovered for weeks or months and that the decaying process took place inside the barn but cing back to your your
00:48:59
original question here Captain is where I think that the folklore the local legend of the man in the barn being
00:49:09
found hanging in the barn I think it came from the original coroner who referenced John Doe as possibly being
00:49:20
hung because we have his comments that are to me reason to believe that the whole myth of the uh right man hanging
00:49:31
came from him so my best guess here again we don't have the autopsy to confirm this it's not available anywhere
00:49:40
but my best guess here is that there's a chance that they may have found some kind of ligature Mark or maybe even some
00:49:46
kind of ligature still on John Doe's neck their the original coroner earlier said quote they hung him which which we
00:49:55
know based off of the information from the police is not true so you wonder then was there an attempt to strangle
00:50:04
this man before he was eventually shot yeah or he could have got into a altercation with the individual he's
00:50:11
choking the individual he's being choked by the murderer the guy pulls out a gun
00:50:17
puts two in his head and goes well his hands were around my throat I need to sever his hands so they take the
00:50:25
whatever DNA off but back to like you said when would this farmer be in the barn last this is why I think it's not a
00:50:33
bad dumping part drying tobacco is is kind of a curing process which can take between three and 8 weeks to properly
00:50:42
prepare tobacco for use mhm so if you know that and maybe you know more about what tobacco looks like when it's
00:50:51
freshly hung that you would know hey if I put this individ ual here they might not come out and check on this tobacco
00:50:59
for 8 weeks that gives you quite a bit of Head Start exactly I'm just of the belief and I'm I could be very wrong
00:51:08
here I think if this guy was local if our joh do was local even remotely local yeah I agree that they would have they
00:51:17
would have been able to connect him to some kind of missing person or or otherwise we do have to point out some
00:51:24
of the more recent movement on this case and this comes back from uh 2017 when they decided to exume the body
00:51:36
of our John Doe and what they did here Captain was they severed his arms above the elbows and then sent the detached
00:51:47
limbs to the FBI's laboratory this is to serve a two-fold purpose one there are hopes that the FBI can determine what
00:51:59
type of implement was used to cut off his hands by examining the limbs for Tool marks and so on the other is for
00:52:08
the purpose of DNA extraction the arms sent to the FBI would contain DNA Rich material that will provide a genetic
00:52:17
profile of this victim and once the DNA profile of the jondo is isolated from his arm tissue it's then entered into
00:52:27
codus a database of criminal offenders and missing persons that did not exist in 1989 when his body was located they
00:52:36
might be able to pull DNA that's not his off off his Limbs and so far they've done their best but to this date no hits
00:52:48
have been obtained now the uh next step in this case was for the the state police to
00:52:57
arrange for John Doe's DNA profile to be provided to the DNA do project to commence the forensic genealogy
00:53:06
process so if we can't find a match directly to him in any of the databases using his DNA which we now have did not
00:53:15
have in 1989 they're hoping that now will maybe we can find a relative or a twin of this
00:53:24
individual or a family tree of AR John do and find out through contacting them and other scientific measures to figure
00:53:33
out who this guy was again I'm of the belief that once they identify AR John do it's going to lead you to probably a
00:53:42
very short list of suspects well have you ever heard of the Grateful dough The Grateful dough pretty interesting story
00:53:50
The Grateful doe the reason why he was called grateful do was he was found wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt the man
00:53:59
was killed in a car accident on June 26 1995 in Greensville County Virginia now his body remained nameless until
00:54:10
December 9th 2015 and eventually his mom came forward because and and this is all stemmed from
00:54:20
computer generated images of Jason and so once they were able to put those out on Facebook his mother was able to come
00:54:30
forward and say that was my son he actually went missing he went missing because he went to follow the Grateful
00:54:37
Dead and then was killed in this car accident and then his body remained nameless like I said but it was all
00:54:43
solved through social media so as much as they're trying to do very good work on this case I think the best chance we
00:54:52
have look I really believe that the True Crime Community can get behind this case
00:54:58
share his image share his image on Facebook Instagram Twitter Tik Tock let's get this guy identified let's send
00:55:07
this guy home yes crowdsourcing can be a powerful and important tool in these types of Investigations and so can the
00:55:15
science as well and I'm glad to report to everyone that in June of 2021 the DNA do project post
00:55:25
in regard to this very case that the they have funded the case they were fundraising to raise funds to be able to
00:55:37
do some of the work on this case their goal was $3,000 major funding for this case was
00:55:43
provided by Patty solivan and they were able to reach that goal so a big thank you to Patty Sullivan and all of the
00:55:52
other donors that contributed to the DNA doe project for not just the Grant County John Doe case but all of the
00:56:01
others so what does this mean it means that they have secured sufficient funding to pay for the forensic
00:56:07
genealogy process in the Grant County John Doe case so now while they run their investigation and their forensic
00:56:19
genealogy process we can crowdsource His Image CR Outsource his information which that stuff is still
00:56:28
information that's needed anyway even if you even if we're able to link him to a
00:56:33
family tree or figure out who this guy was we need to know as much about him as possible again I think it's going to
00:56:43
lead to a short list of suspects once he is in fact positively identified one thing I want to point out though Captain
00:56:52
when we're talking about crowdsourcing and one thing that that you hit on right from Jump Street here is again the
00:56:59
height of this individual is very important that separates him from a lot of other potential unidentified
00:57:07
individuals or even missing persons that there were reports filed for so the vicap according to the FBI He's listed
00:57:17
at 6'5 in tall just to give everybody a bit of reference in the power of that little
00:57:27
piece of information I went on to the Charlie projects website to look at known individuals that have been
00:57:34
reported missing and with the simple search of typing in John Doe's height the return was Zero that there were zero
00:57:44
missing males according to the Charlie project that are listed at 6 foot 5 in tall now if we take that down right
00:57:53
let's say that maybe He's listed at 6'4 whoever reported and missing thinks that
00:57:59
he's 6'4 in tall there's 110 males that are missing that are 6'4 in tall some of
00:58:06
them the majority of them in fact the overwhelming majority of them have been reported missing after this guy's body
00:58:12
was found in that Barn so it cannot be them well it could be them because somebody goes missing and you reported
00:58:19
missing afterwards and then if you take that number and go up to six foot 6 inches tall there are just 14 males that
00:58:27
are listed on the Charlie projects website so again that's a powerful piece of information in this case a powerful
00:58:35
piece of information in this case will be what they believe he looked like his likeness that we now have that computer
00:58:42
image of and it's very detailed in my opinion the captain's going to put it on the website and you'll be able to check
00:58:50
that out at true Crim garage.com now the question is could be why bother with this at all right
00:58:58
there's a lot of work going on in this 30-year-old case there are plenty of recent homicides that are unsolved why
00:59:06
push this to solve this one from 1989 now some members of law enforcement involved in this case have commented
00:59:13
directly on that per Fox 19 News quote there's some family somewhere they're wondering where their Uncle their son
00:59:22
their brother where their and they deserve to have that peace of mind this is a quote from the Kentucky State
00:59:30
Police and it goes on to say we are very hopeful that we are going to get a match
00:59:36
we don't have any family to contact it's really sad the family they never had that peace of mind there's someone out
00:59:44
there who's missing a son or an uncle or a dad and as you pointed out Captain the
00:59:50
Kentucky State Police share and Echo your words exactly they say he deserves to go back home his family deserves to
00:59:57
know where he is he was buried in a Popper's grave with no headstone yeah so it's a pretty simple call to action if
01:00:05
you can share this image with friends and family if you can share it on social media I think we might be able to make a
01:00:12
difference in this case and I want to take this just a step further right because of course it's not just for
01:00:19
Humane or sentimental reasons that we want to identify the Grant County John Doe we True Crime garage want to
01:00:29
identify him and remind everybody out there that this guy was murdered someone murdered him and that murderer has
01:00:39
gotten away with it for decades now that we have the ability to use modern science to provide answers no matter how
01:00:46
old the crime is it's a worthwhile undertaking to try to bring closure to families and justice to the victims no
01:00:56
matter how old their cases may be well and I think we both agree with him being such a large individual there's probably
01:01:03
more than one individual responsible so it's two or more bags of [ __ ] that need
01:01:10
to be held responsible for this heinous crime so please take a minute to go to our website truecrime garage.com look at
01:01:18
this individual to see if you can help if anybody out there listening has any information on on this case or the
01:01:25
identity of this individual at all please contact the Kentucky State Police at 859
01:01:33
4281 1212 or FBI vicap at 800 6344 [Music] 97 thank you guys so much for joining us
01:01:56
here in the garage if you'd like to have an evening with me the captain you can do so in Champagne Illinois on December
01:02:05
11th the show starts at 6:30 and we'll be doing a Mee and greet afterwards at 8:00 it's at the Blind Pig company and
01:02:14
that's in Champagne Illinois get the tickets at Captain fat hands.com Colonel do we have any recommended reading this
01:02:21
week this week we got a little recommended listening check out the Beyond bizarre True Crime podcast this
01:02:27
is a weekly podcast with a different guest host or host each week coming from the world of True Crime podcast and the
01:02:36
guest select the case and tell you about this truly bizarre case in their own style and news flash here the old
01:02:44
captain and Colonel well we hosted last week so make sure you check out the Beyond bizarre True Crime podcast
01:02:52
wherever you get your podcast and join us back here in the garage next week until then be good be kind and don't
01:03:11
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