Australia Australia - St Helen’s Park NSW, Middle Eastern/SE Asian Male, 35-45, 2001

[Bohemian]

In 2001, a young boy was playing at a reserve on Meredith Crescent in St Helen’s Park in Sydney’s south west, with a group of children when he came across a human skull.

Detectives went to the site and ended up digging up almost an entire skeleton.

They also found a gold bracelet, a wristwatch, cigar tin, lighter, belt buckle and belt, men’s clothing and shoes, and spent .22 calibre casings, as well as food tins and glass bottles.

The date, place and cause of death were unknown.

Further investigations, and the help of University of Waikato’s Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory in New Zealand, determined the man actually died between 1980 and 1985.

[...] DNA tests suggest the man most likely had dark brown or black hair, brown eyes and a mixed ancestry of South Asian and Middle Eastern.

The man is described as 166-174cm tall with a muscular build.

https://7news.com.au/news/nsw-police/mystery-human-skull-found-in-sydney-park-18-years-ago-could-soon-be-identified-c-466968
Mystery human skull found in Sydney park 18 years ago could soon be identified
Monday, 23 September 2019 8:50 am

 

[Melt71]

No recent media or updates on this case - hopefully @othram will be asked by the Australian Federal Police to work this one.

 

[Hausos]

Huh? I always wondered how they come up with the ancestry results. Someone mixed with South Asian and Middle Eastern would be extremely rare. I suspect he’s fully Middle Eastern or fully South Asian, and leaning towards Middle Eastern because it’s rare for South Asian men to smoke, much less cigars. Smoking is very common amongst Middle Eastern men.

The only Middle Easterners that can have traces of South Asian in their DNA are Afghans & Iranians. Perhaps he belongs to one of these groups? Doubt it though.

The most prominent Middle Easterners in Australia, especially in the Sydney area, are Lebanese people. Interesting he was found with 0.22 caliber casings. The Lebanese mafia & gangs are also notorious there.

JMO and pure speculation. It’s also entirely possible he was suicidal.

 

[Melt71]

The only Middle Easterners that can have traces of South Asian in their DNA are Afghans & Iranians. Perhaps he belongs to one of these groups? Doubt it though.

It's entirely possible that his haplogroup was made up of those two heritages. I assumed he may have been Iranian, Afghani, perhaps western Pakistan.

https://www.science.org/content/article/south-asians-are-descended-mix-farmers-herders-and-hunter-gatherers-ancient-dna-reveals

Quote: Nearly all of the Indian subcontinent's ethnic and linguistic groups are the product of three ancient Eurasian populations who met and mixed: local hunter-gatherers, Middle Eastern farmers, and Central Asian herders. Three similar groups also mingled in ancient Europe, giving the two subcontinents surprisingly parallel histories.

Lebanese, as I understand it, have more Levantine DNA features which means more focus on African and European historical DNA as well as Arab.

Lebanese organised crime in Australia is certainly a small but well organised and long-established part of the population; as an Aussie I don't think I'd call them more notorious than any other criminal group.