Resolved CA - Hacienda Heights, WhtMale 865UMCA, 18-25, black rosary beads, Nov'72 - namus removed

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liveforyou

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Dermot Kelly

http://charleyproject.org/cases/k/kelly_dermot.html

He disappeared in 1972. Kids were probably leaving home and embracing the hippie counterculture back then, often heading out for California, but he never came home and there hasn't really been anything in his case since then. That's thirty eight years.

Could this boy be a match? I know it says he's older than Dermot, but they seem to match closely.

http://www.ncmec.org/missingkids/se...NCMU&seqNum=1&caseLang=en_US&searchLang=en_US
 
Definitely looks like a possibility.

Age is out but not by much.

Decedent is heavier than Dermot and had brown rather than blond hair but Dermot's hair looks kind of dark in the photo of him.

Definitely there is an excellent facial match.

Height is spot on. Decedent is heavier by ~25lbs but this could be a mixture of an inaccurate estimate and filling out through doing manual labor at age 17.

There's no mention of scars in Kelly's case and while I don't think it's likely that he could have acquired them between disappearing and being found deceased, it's an outside chance. There's so little information given about Dermot that it wouldn't be that surprising, even if he had scars, that they weren't mentioned.

Distance is a big negative factor but if he were voluntarily missing and there were no particular evidence of foul play, it's not that much of a problem.

There's no mention of Dermot wearing glasses but again, this might have been left out and/or the glasses may not be the victim's.

Given that eye color is unknown for the decedent, it appears there was some decomp prior to discovery so it'd be useful if there were an indication of likely time and cause of death.
 
This is random, but I've always thought that Dermot Kelly looks SO much like the actor Dermot Mulroney:

http://tinyurl.com/ya6osnt

I even looked Dermot Mulroney's age up one day, just to see whether it could be a possibility... his birth year is 1963, so it's not THAT far off. I'm sure they're not the same person, it's just one of those things where seeing a picture next to a name triggers a switch in your brain.

That being said, I don't think the UID looks very much like Dermot Kelly, but it's so hard to tell with the morgue picture and the composite. I think the circumstances and statistics match up pretty well.
 
I've always thought so too! It's almost a little scary.
Dermot Kelly is my mother's brother, so I'd really like to help find some closure. Everyone is just completely at a loss for what happened to him. He hasn't contacted anyone, but the family doesn't think he's passed away. I guess it's easier to try to rule out the unidentified, but this Hacienda Heights boy looks so much like him in the facial reconstruction.
 
Demographics are all over the place - gone from 6'0"/175 to 6'3"/195 and age is 18 - 25 or 25+.

The UID looks pretty young to me in the morgue photo but who knows?

UID's hair is described as blond/strawberry (but looks dark in black and white) with blue eyes, which matches with Dermot.

There's so much uncertainty here it's hard to know what's happening.
 
It is frusterating, the varying stats, but according to the family, Dermot was about 6'1. He was lanky, so closer to 175. Nobody recalls him having any scars.
I don't think this unidentified boy is more than a teenager, especially considering the way he was dressed.

It's been kinda theorized among us that Dermot ran away to join the hippie movement. He was really restless and rebellious, and super into music. But wouldn't he have come back? Or contacted someone? It doesn't really add up.
 
You didn't have to be into the hippie movement to be into moving around, following the music, etc., and it seems like a lot of people just never got back into touch with families they left under often negative circumstances. And we were all heading to California -- San Francisco, the city of love. Venice Beach. Monterrey. So it's entirely possible Dermot wound up out there and met with an unfortunate situation. I think the resemblance is close enough to submit, anyway.

The UID really reminds me of a guy I went to college with. I remember those jeans with the peace/love embroidery (though I'm sure hundreds of guys had similar pairs. He was part Navajo. I can't remember his name, though. I'll have to ask some friends what ever happened to him.
 
It may be worthwhile to submit, but the scars on the UID do sound surgical, so I would think that your family would have remembered him having surgery. Do you or the LE on Dermot's case have DNA or fingerprints to submit for a comparison?
 
I was just looking at that UID last night, and trying to find possibles. I was looking at Dermot Kelly for a bit and decided against it because I didn't think he looked like the drawing. That was before Snufu put up the link to the postmortem (which looks nothing like the person in the drawing, but looks much more like DFK than does the drawing).

It looks like the postmortem was photoshopped on his right cheek. Maybe to hide a bullet wound? If so, then of course that would affect his resemblance in death to himself in life.

I think there is a good resemblance between Dermott and the person in the postmortem. The chins match, the noses match, the eyebrows match. Same color hair and eyes.

I think it's worth a try, but being that it's Los Angeles County, you might have some trouble getting them to bother with it.
 
liveforyou said:
It is frusterating, the varying stats, but according to the family, Dermot was about 6'1. He was lanky, so closer to 175. Nobody recalls him having any scars.
I don't think this unidentified boy is more than a teenager, especially considering the way he was dressed.

It's been kinda theorized among us that Dermot ran away to join the hippie movement. He was really restless and rebellious, and super into music. But wouldn't he have come back? Or contacted someone? It doesn't really add up.
Click to expand...

It wasn't just the stats -- NAMUS says the second scar is on the abdomen, while LA says it's on the lower spine. Quite a difference...

eta: and yeah, I agree, the morgue photo is MUCH closer to Dermot than the reconstruction is.
 
Nobody recalls Dermot having scars.. it was a messy time in the family though, and nobody's memories are crystal clear. I mean, it has been almost forty years. My mom was younger than Dermot, and their dad was going through a job loss. Their marriage was failing and sometimes abusive, and she never doubted that Dermot ran away to California, as he had friends who did the same. But Dermot was specifically interested in the hippie movement. If he did anything, he went with that. But he was very low key and non-confrontational. He could have gotten into drugs though.
 
CarlK90245 said:
I think it's worth a try, but being that it's Los Angeles County, you might have some trouble getting them to bother with it.
Click to expand...

I agree with Carl here. It might be best if any request to look into a possible match came from Dermot's family.
 
My suggestion is to contact NCMEC regarding the decedent's NCMEC poster. They usually will look into it and will get a better response than we will- at least that's what I found with Dawn's case.
 
welcome to WS liveforyou. I'm sorry it is under these circumstances. I agree with Carls post, however since you are family LE is likely to take a request from family far more seriously than any of us amatuer non family sleuths. My suggestion is it is close enough to submit the possible match to both Los Angeles and LaSalle County, IL.
 
Snufamonbobball said:
My suggestion is to contact NCMEC regarding the decedent's NCMEC poster. They usually will look into it and will get a better response than we will- at least that's what I found with Dawn's case.
Click to expand...

So true! I forgot about the NCMEC contact when I posted above. I would definately contact NCMEC.
 
liveforyou. I just wanted to suggest a thread for your uncle in either the missing persons missing but not forgotten forum, or the cold case forum. This will allow members to discuss and research/sleuth your uncles case outside of discussing the above possible match. I'm in Illinois and I have run across his info from time to time. I would really like the opportunity to sleuth his case if you are so inclined we can start a thread for him.

I did a search and did not see a thread started for him elsewhere, other than the missing children in america threads which are locked to discussion.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions and support =]
Hopefully one day we will find out what happened.. hopefully he'll call home one day.
But this John Doe really does make me think he could be out there, unidentified.
 
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