Resolved NY - North Collins, Male Skeletal Remains buried off Gowanda Rd, Jun'17

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The lettering on the pen is clearly worn off; METACORE would look like FTACORE if the M and the bottom part of the first E were missing.
 
CJH said:
The lettering on the pen is clearly worn off; METACORE would look like FTACORE if the M and the bottom part of the first E were missing.
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oh wow CJH great thought!! wow.. So Yes the Place could be METACORE the whole time.. I found A METACORE that was started in 1972.. a couple of posts back..
 
ok I found this guy who when missing from Illinois Cook County.. I noticed I-80/90 goes straight from there to Where he went missing in the direction to where the unidentified was buried..
Also I noticed that the jacket the guy was wearing they said was a tan buckskin with collar.. which Looking up Barry Dolan Western style jacket I have come across a couple that look like that.. But we still don't know the color of the Coat. Also mentions light brown pant again we don't have a color.. anyway I just thought I would share this guy...

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1777dmil.html


Michael D. Mansfield
Missing since December 31, 1975 from Lincoln, Cook Co, Illinois.
Classification: Involuntary


Vital Statistics
Age at Time of Disappearance: 19 years old
Height and Weight: 5'8 and 135lbs
Distinguishing Characteristics: Brown, shoulder length hair, he had a mustache extending to the ends of his mouth; Blue eyes Scar on the bridge of his nose
Clothing: A tan buckskin coat with fleece collor and a brown print shirt, light brown pants or blue jeans and white tennis shoes.
Dentals: Available
DNA: Available



Circumstances of Disappearance
Michael Mansfield, a Lincoln College student, was last seen on December 31, 1975. Around 14.00 on New Year's Eve 1975, he received a phone call, put on his coat and walked out the door, telling his parents he was visiting a friend in nearby Arlington Heights.
This was six days before he was to testify against Russell Smrekar, a former Lincoln College student, who was convicted of murdering Robin and Jay Fry and is serving 200 to 600 years at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. Jay Fry was a clerk who saw Smrekar steal two steaks from a local grocery store, and he was prepared to testify at Smrekar’s shoplifting trial. Smrekar is also believed to be responsible for the disappearance of Ruth Martin who was to be a minor witness in the trial. Both Martin and Mansfield are presumed to have been killed by Smrekar, although their bodies were never found.
In 2004, a book titled "Process Of Elimination: A Midwestern Murder Mystery" was released by author Bonnie J. Thompson. In it, she writes about the unsolved disappearances of Mansfield and Martin.
Russell Smrekar died on October 26, 2011 of cancer at the at Menard Correctional Center. He gave a deathbed confession to murdering Michael Mansfield to police. Michael's body has not been recovered Peoria Journal Star.
 
CJH said:
The lettering on the pen is clearly worn off; METACORE would look like FTACORE if the M and the bottom part of the first E were missing.
Click to expand...

This is a good theory. I failed at finding any listings for anything called FTACore in Detroit. Would anyone like to contact the investigator and suggest this or request another picture of the other side of the pen?

(Disclaimer: I have no experience contacting people and don't plan to start, just suggesting for anyone who wants to dig more deeply :winko: ).
 
madamx said:
ok I found this guy who when missing from Illinois Cook County.. I noticed I-80/90 goes straight from there to Where he went missing in the direction to where the unidentified was buried..
Also I noticed that the jacket the guy was wearing they said was a tan buckskin with collar.. which Looking up Barry Dolan Western style jacket I have come across a couple that look like that.. But we still don't know the color of the Coat. Also mentions light brown pant again we don't have a color.. anyway I just thought I would share this guy...

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1777dmil.html


Michael D. Mansfield
Missing since December 31, 1975 from Lincoln, Cook Co, Illinois.
Classification: Involuntary
.
Click to expand...


This seems pretty unlikely for a couple of reasons: firstly, the boots, Canadian-made Kaufman Badlanders (trademark registered 1976, after this Mansfield's disappearance); secondly, the pen (bearing the name of a business from Detroit) which had an American flag on it, suggesting it might've been a "patriotic" Bicentennial thing (possibly added to office-supply company catalogues for the bicentennial); the pattern of wear on the pen, based on the "M" and part of the "E" being missing, and the likely location of those letters on the barrel, suggests that the deceased had probably had the pen for a little while (long enough to do some writing with it; the letters were printed on so that the worn-away letters would be where the thumb of a right-handed writer would be in contact with the barrel). The evidence of both the boots and the pen suggests sometime after 1976, but before 1982 (adverts in the Detroit Free Press for 1983 show an address on Fort Street, they're in the 1982 Detroit white pages on Wabash Street) and probably not later than 1980 or so (in 1979 Metacore shows up in the minutes of a Detroit City Council meeting for "redevelopment of a commercial district at 4500 Lawton", which is very close by to their address on 17th Street, but about five or six blocks away from Wabash).
 
CJH said:
This seems pretty unlikely for a couple of reasons: firstly, the boots, Canadian-made Kaufman Badlanders (trademark registered 1976, after this Mansfield's disappearance); secondly, the pen (bearing the name of a business from Detroit) which had an American flag on it, suggesting it might've been a "patriotic" Bicentennial thing (possibly added to office-supply company catalogues for the bicentennial); the pattern of wear on the pen, based on the "M" and part of the "E" being missing, and the likely location of those letters on the barrel, suggests that the deceased had probably had the pen for a little while (long enough to do some writing with it; the letters were printed on so that the worn-away letters would be where the thumb of a right-handed writer would be in contact with the barrel). The evidence of both the boots and the pen suggests sometime after 1976, but before 1982 (adverts in the Detroit Free Press for 1983 show an address on Fort Street, they're in the 1982 Detroit white pages on Wabash Street) and probably not later than 1980 or so (in 1979 Metacore shows up in the minutes of a Detroit City Council meeting for "redevelopment of a commercial district at 4500 Lawton", which is very close by to their address on 17th Street, but about five or six blocks away from Wabash).
Click to expand...

Street View shows a run down industrial property near downtown Detroit.
 
Nevermind all that.. this Michael guy has long brown hair and our John Doe has short Blonde hair! ha! What was I thinking?

CJH said:
This seems pretty unlikely for a couple of reasons: firstly, the boots, Canadian-made Kaufman Badlanders (trademark registered 1976, after this Mansfield's disappearance); secondly, the pen (bearing the name of a business from Detroit) which had an American flag on it, suggesting it might've been a "patriotic" Bicentennial thing (possibly added to office-supply company catalogues for the bicentennial); the pattern of wear on the pen, based on the "M" and part of the "E" being missing, and the likely location of those letters on the barrel, suggests that the deceased had probably had the pen for a little while (long enough to do some writing with it; the letters were printed on so that the worn-away letters would be where the thumb of a right-handed writer would be in contact with the barrel). The evidence of both the boots and the pen suggests sometime after 1976, but before 1982 (adverts in the Detroit Free Press for 1983 show an address on Fort Street, they're in the 1982 Detroit white pages on Wabash Street) and probably not later than 1980 or so (in 1979 Metacore shows up in the minutes of a Detroit City Council meeting for "redevelopment of a commercial district at 4500 Lawton", which is very close by to their address on 17th Street, but about five or six blocks away from Wabash).
Click to expand...
 
I also want to add, there are a lot of connections with Buffalo and Detroit. Buffalo has a lot of auto plants, Ford is there, GM is there, Jeep is/was there.... but many have counterparts/headquarters in Detroit. My dad worked at the ford stamping plant and went to detroit almost weekly for a day or two... so the pen could have easily been brought back and passed on, or it could be someone in the auto industry that came to Erie County looking for work.


Where he was found is also only 10 minutes away from the prison.
 
Okay, I put my research degree to work on the Metacore Corp of Detroit MI.
Metacore Corp first appears listing in the classified section of the Detroit Free Press Jan 30, 1979 with a listed phone number that we see on the pen of (313) 353-8640. Metacore was selling different vehicles in the classified section with the number we have listed on the pen UNTIL they change their number in 1983 to (313) 353-8640.
Therefore, the pen was most likely made between 1979 and 1983 when the business changed their phone number.
All information came from an archive search on the Detroit Free Press website. http://freep.newspapers.com/search/#query=Metacore+Corp&offset=12
 
Mike in WNY said:
Progress in North Collins human remains case


http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/progress-in-north-collins-human-remains-case/482985385
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Thanks for the update Mike and welcome to Websleuths!

Here's a quote from the article:
The Sheriff’s Office received the lab’s initial report on Oct. 10, and according to that report, the medical examiner was able to get a full profile using nuclear DNA technology.

Officials say this will nearly double the chances that a match could be made from the database, meaning the body could eventually be identified.

The profile is scheduled to be uploaded to federal and state databases next week.
Click to expand...

Hopefully this man's family has submitted DNA somewhere.
 
Could there be a match with Duane Robert Talmon Jr.?

Duane went missing in 1974 from Clarence, NY (43 miles away from where John Doe's remains were found.) Duane was 16 years old when he disappeared. He was 5"8 and 145 lbs. On the day he disappeared he called his mom and told her not to pick him up from school but to pick him up at Miles Rd. He was never seen again. In 2003, Michael Thurman was tried and convicted of Duane's murder. Thurman was from Tonawonda NY (18 miles from Duane's home town). **REMEMBER that the owner of the MetaCorp Company (the pen on Doe) might have had extended family in Tonawonda.** Thurman confessed that he met-up with Duane and the two had a fight over a drug deal. According to Thurman, he killed Duane & buried him in North Amherst, NY. Extensive searches by the police never turned up Duane's body at this location. Could the body found in North Collins be Duane?

Sources used: Charlie Project www.charlieproject.org
 
[h=1]Can DNA identify victim of decades-old North Collins murder?[/h]
NORTH COLLINS, N.Y. – It's been almost a year since a hiker noticed a boot sticking out of the ground, a bone still attached.

The rest was buried three feet under the ground in the woods behind Marion J. Fricano Memorial Park in North Collins.

A meticulous excavation by Mercyhurst anthropologists lasted the weekend of June 10, 2017, and for 11 months, Erie County detectives have been trying to piece what they found together.
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"I think we can say unequivocally, we believe that it was a homicide,” said Captain Gregory Savage.

Savage heads the detective division at the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, and has spent the better part of a year trying to solve this murder mystery.

Very little of the skeletal remains were salvageable...but other clues held up surprisingly well, like a pen with a Detroit address on it.
"He had a leather tri-fold wallet. He had a comb,” Savage said of certain intact clues.
The remains were also found with a pair of Kaufman boots, likely produced in the 1960s or 1970s. A jacket with a Barry Dolan label was also produced in the 70s.

Investigators and anthropologists say the remains are likely a white man, who was between 15 and 25 when he was killed, possibly with curly, dirty blonde hair.
But detectives admit they won't tell us everything; They're keeping a few details secret in case someone ever reveals a detail that only someone with information would know.
Using sophisticated techniques, New York City's Chief Medical Examiner office was able to get a nuclear DNA profile from bone samples. Erie County has sent that to every federal DNA database and missing persons list to no avail.

Without a DNA match, identifying a man from a 50-year-old murder will be difficult.
Captain Savage hopes a similar DNA profile might lead him to a living relative who might remember a cousin, uncle, or grandfather who went missing.
Click to expand...
https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/l...decades-old-north-collins-murder/71-549063462
 
So the entire time I was reading about this case I was dwelling on how this reminded me of Warren Niederfringer, who went missing in 1972 in CT.

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/23570/185/

Dark/dirty blonde (UID) and brown (or more often, light brown) (Warren) are often interchangeable, and a look at his hair in pictures reminds me of my own - something people can never determine if it is dark blonde or light brown. Hair can also lighten due to sun exposure and other elemental exposure. Warren was around 5'8-5'10 or so, which is the lower half of this UID's range. He was last known to be traveling around ("Boston or North Carolina", which are two opposite ends of the east coast), and likely could have just... traveled there and then died eventually. Age at disappearance (23) would fit both 15-25 and 25-50 if he died in about 1974 or 1975.
 
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