GREENBELT, Md. — For 45 years, investigators wondered who he was.
On August 3, 1981, a young man was found dead near a guard rail along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, with no obvious signs of foul play and no identification. What led him there and how he died were a mystery, and for over four decades, so was his identity.
Now, thanks to volunteer DNA experts and investigative genetic genealogy, experts have identified the man as 24-year-old Eddie Devone, a Baltimore resident.
Greenbelt John Doe, found dead in 1981, identified as Baltimore man
In 1981, a witness reported seeing a body on the side of the road near the BW Parkway, which falls under Park Police jurisdiction. Investigators at the time took fingerprints and checked hospitals and missing persons reports, but found no matches.
"That really just left a huge question mark of, what exactly happened, and where exactly he came from," said Lieutenant Daniel Bahamonde, acting commander of U.S. Park Police criminal investigations.
The case was reopened in 2013, and investigators re-checked everything and obtained hair samples from the medical examiner. Still, not much turned up.
A Park Police detective enlisted help from the DNA Doe Project, an international group of volunteer DNA experts. They take on cases from the US and Canada.
Matthew Waterfield, a team leader at the DNA Doe Project, spoke with WMAR-2 News about the case.
"The process that our teams use to identify John and Jane Does is called investigative genetic genealogy," Waterfield told WMAR-2 News.
The team, Waterfield explained, used the man's DNA and compared it to public databases to build a family tree. They were able to determine that the John Doe had roots in the Fayetteville area of North Carolina. Park Police traveled to Fayetteville and met with family.
"We did say to the agency, we do wonder if there might have been a sort of, a surprising event here, maybe somebody adopted out of the family," Waterfield said.
Sure enough, about 100 years ago, a young girl in the family was adopted, but she didn't stay in North Carolina. She moved to Baltimore, and this man was her grandson.
In December 2025, DNA Doe Project identified him as 24-year-old Eddie Devone, whom family had not heard from since the late 1970s.
"The closest match we had to work with did end up being a pretty distant relative of the unidentified man. It's not somebody she would have ever met, or even have heard of. But because she uploaded her DNA, we were able to build her family tree back in time and then forward in time to try and figure out who in her distant family could be that John Doe," Waterfield said.
While investigators now know who the man was, much about the case remains unsolved, including how Devone died. Park Police can reopen the investigation if new information arises, but they now have one crucial piece of the puzzle in what is no longer a John Doe case.
Surviving family members provided a childhood photo of the man after learning of the identification.
"That's my takeaway, that we were able to give family some closure," Bahamonde said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
