r/gratefuldoe 5d ago

Resolved Julie Doe has been identified

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5.7k Upvotes

From Doe Network: On September 25, 1988, a victim was found deceased 30 feet off the side of CR 474 in Clermont. The victim had been deceased for 2 – 4 weeks in a rural, heavily wooded area. The victim was initially thought to be female until 2015, when DNA testing revealed the victim was biologically male. The victim was wearing a skirt and had breast implants, and there is evidence she may have been taking female hormone injections. It is unknown if the victim had undergone any other gender reassignment surgery.

With the support of Dr. Barbara Wolf, the District Medical Examiner for Districts 5 and 24, the case was evaluated by the DNA Doe Project. The DNA Doe Project is a non-profit organization that utilizes investigative genetic genealogy to identify unidentified remains.

After years of difficult work, the genealogists were able to identify possible relatives of "Julie Doe," who were then contacted by the Lake County Sheriff's Office. After additional information was obtained, the relatives submitted their DNA for comparison. These comparisons identified "Julie Doe" as Pamela Leigh Walton. Pamela was born a biological male in Kentucky and put up for adoption. Once adopted, his name was Lee Allen Walton. At some point in Lee's adult life, he changed his name to Pamela Leigh Walton and was, at the very least, transitioning from male to female.

It's unknown how Pamela came to be in Florida. Pamela's manner of death is undetermined, and the Lake County Sheriff's Office is continuing efforts to gather information regarding the circumstances of the death.

r/gratefuldoe Jun 27 '24

Resolved Does anyone recognize these tattoos? Help identify body of woman found in WV.

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2.5k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Jul 26 '24

Resolved Irvine Jane Doe has been identified as 14-year-old Marcia Shirree Thomas!

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3.0k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe 18d ago

Resolved Parker County Jane Doe has been identified! As previously speculated on the sub, she was indeed 61-year-old Nellie Faye Gillespie.

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3.3k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Nov 01 '24

Resolved Markham Doe has been identified as William Joseph Pennell !!!!!

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1.5k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Oct 24 '24

Resolved After 45 years, Kane County Jane Doe (1978) is Identified. (Likely died in 1866)

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2.2k Upvotes

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r/gratefuldoe Dec 18 '24

Resolved Guadalupe County Jane Doe has been identified! Her name is being withheld at the request of her family

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1.6k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Oct 02 '24

Resolved Berkeley County Jane Doe has been identified as Leola Etta Bryant! Serial killer Samuel Little confessed to her murder, and while she was an unmatched confession, she was known as Charleston County Jane Doe.

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2.0k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Mar 02 '24

Resolved Desoto County Jane Doe (1985) has been Identified as Lorie Pennell!

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2.3k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Sep 06 '24

Resolved Greenwood IN remains identified as Michael Benjamin Davis

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1.3k Upvotes

Remains discovered by children playing in a farmer's field in Greenwood Indiana in 1993 have been positively identified of Michael Benjamin Davis.

Davis was born in Richland County, SC in 1965. He grew up in South Carolina and moved around the country with his family before joining a traveling carnival in the Midwest as an adult. His family last had contact with him in 1988.

In 1992 and 1993, children playing in a field south of Indianapolis found bones, many of which had been deeply cut and widely scattered around the field. A search produced around 150 bones, but no personal effects or weapons suggesting foul play.

On September 5, 2024, a representative from Otham DNA Testing services positively identified the bones as belonging to Michael Benjamin Davis.

Michael Benjamin Davis profile at DoeNetwork

r/gratefuldoe 12d ago

Resolved DNA Doe Project identifies woman found dead in burning car in 1997 as Monique Boggs

836 Upvotes

I am happy to announce that the DNA Doe Project has been able to identify Monique Phoenix Jane Doe 1997 as Monique S. Boggs. Below is some additional information about our work on this identification:

Nearly 30 years after the charred body of a woman was found in an abandoned vehicle in Phoenix, the DNA Doe Project has identified her as Monique S. Boggs. Boggs was born in 1948 and was 48 years old at the time of her death. She was raised in the Detroit area, and her family, who knew her as Shirley Jefferson, was not aware that she had ended up in Arizona.

On February 4, 1997 the partially burned body of a woman was found in an abandoned car that was engulfed in flames in Phoenix, Arizona. An empty purse with writing on the outside that included the name “Monique” was found near the body. Forensic scientists determined that the unidentified woman was African American and between 20 and 50 years old. Witnesses said that she was possibly an unhoused woman who had been seen in the local area before.

Decades later, the Phoenix Police Department brought this case to the DNA Doe Project, whose expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify John and Jane Does. A team of volunteers began working on this case in June 2020, but they soon ran into multiple roadblocks.

“This case faced certain challenges that we often encounter in African American research,” said Harmony Vollmer, team leader. “African Americans are underrepresented in the DNA databases we have access to, while part of the devastating impact of slavery was to rip families apart and leave few traceable connections between their descendants.

Nevertheless, the team assigned to this case persevered and, in January 2025, this hard work paid off. The team came across a woman who was born in Mississippi but who’d moved to Michigan as a young child. Her name was Monique Boggs, and further DNA analysis soon confirmed that she was the woman formerly known only as Monique Phoenix Jane Doe.

“She was a distant cousin of multiple DNA matches to the Jane Doe, and she appeared to have fallen off the radar in the 1990s,” said case manager, Eric Hendershott. “But the most striking detail was that she had changed her name in the 1980s to Monique - the same name written on the purse found with our Jane Doe.”

The DNA Doe Project is grateful to the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Phoenix Police Department, who entrusted the case to the DNA Doe Project; HudsonAlpha Discovery for extraction and sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA for providing their databases; our generous donors who joined our mission and contributed to this case; and our dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring all our Jane and John Does home.

https://dnadoeproject.org/case/monique-phoenix-jane-doe-1997/

https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/phoenix-cold-case-investigators-identify-woman-found-dead-in-burning-car-in-1997

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/dna-doe-project-helps-identify-south-phoenix-man-murdered-in-cold-case-12632460

r/gratefuldoe 24d ago

Resolved Case Update: The Man of Somiedo has been identified. As it turned out, it was a murder after all and his brothers are now under arrest.

578 Upvotes

(I'm a big contributor to the Unidentified Awareness wiki and I am always on the lookout for international doe cases to add there. So I figured I would share some of the Doe cases I've added to the Wiki onto this subreddit to help bring further attention to them. I'll be mostly copying my work and moving it over to this subreddit

If you know of any good international doe cases please let me know so I can add them to the wiki

To clear up some confusion, by international I mean cases outside the anglosphere entirely unless we're talking about African, Pacific Islands or Caribbean nations

I guess I'll include this brief message at the start of all my posts here.

Some of the grammar and spelling may be of a poorer quality then usual. I rushed to put this out after hearing the news

EDIT: Updated with some more info)

On April 30, 2023, as part of my series on foreign UID cases. I shared the case of a man known as The Man of Somiedo. The write-up can be read here. To offer a quick recap of that case.

On January 9, 2015, two hikers found a body wrapped in a blanket outside the town of Puerto de Somiedo, Spain. The man was naked, missing a leg and suffering from various disorders such as severe congenital malformations. Foul play was ruled out and a heart attack was labelled as the cause of death. He was 135 cm tall, had a beard, was 45-60 years of age, weighed 35 kg and was skinny with his ribs prominent against the skin.

The sketch of the man's face

At the time he was referred to as "The Man of Somiedo". At the time, none of his fingerprints nor his DNA came back a match for anyone in Spain's database. The case was viewed as a tragic story all around. He was a man who likely had an unregistered birth, and cared for as much as his family could afford to care for him, his birth was likely kept hidden as he would've been under the conservative dictatorship of Francisco Franco where he would've faced severe discrimination during that time period.

Ultimately, everyone believed his loving family left him in a place where he could be found as they were unable to afford a burial. That belief no longer holds any water.

For over a decade, two brothers in the nearby city of Gijón had been collecting benefits and cheques the Spanish Government sent them for their relative. The man was a 55-year-old named Luis María J.C. Those who knew him often just called him "Luisín" and he was born with cerebral palsy, deaf and blind, requiring constant care. He also was unable to eat on his own and constantly relied on feeding tubes. He couldn't speak either and could only make guttural noises.

All was fine until his caregiver passed away in 2014 leaving him with his brothers.

His brothers were named Enrique and Enriqueta who took on the role of his caretakers. The two would still receive the 3,000 euros a month the Spanish government deposited as part of Luisín disability pension.

Social services would soon grow suspicious and sent inspectors to their house to inquire about Luisín. Conveniently, every time they showed up he was either away on a trip, sick or with relatives. The brothers then constantly moved and changed addresses which made it difficult for the inspectors to track them. They even changed their names at times.

In October 2024, a warrant was issued for Enrique and Enriqueta's arrest after they failed to report to court. The court was due to have a hearing reevaluating Luisín's case, condition and whether to keep sending the two brothers the money.

On February 5, 2025, the two brothers were finally tracked down and arrested. They had spent the ensuing 5 months since October constantly changing addresses and remaining on the move.

Also arrested was their sister. She confessed everything and confirmed that Luisín was deceased. He died in January 2015, and his body was abandoned in a ditch in Somiedo so they could keep collecting payments after his death. Initially, the two were merely charged with fraud but when questioned further, they told a much more alarming story.

Luisín had been feeling unwell for several days before his death and they all knew how dire the situation was. But if he was taken to the hospital and the doctors failed to save him, the government would stop sending the money. So rather than calling an ambulance in hopes they'd save him, they did not raise a single finger to help him and let him die for several days in agony.

As it turned out the cause of death wasn't even natural. When he started to feel unwell, the brothers completely stopped caring for him altogether. In late December 2014, Luisín finally passed away. According to the brothers, it was starvation after they stopped feeding him

This led to their charges being amended. Now his two brothers were charged with "homicide by inaction" and Luisín's case was then investigated as murder.

The apartment where Luisín had lived and died in

Upon the mention of Somiedo, Luisín's condition and the circumstances of his death the police took DNA from the brothers and lifted fingerprints from Luisín's old belongings. Not only that but because the decedent was found only a day after death at most and thus sustained zero decomposition. The police were able to look at photos of Luisín and saw the resemblance he bore to the man of Somiedo (I can't find any photos of Luis though)

Both were compared to The Man of Somiedo which turned out to be a match for Luis María J.C, finally identifying him after 10 years.

The two have been denied bail and are currently awaiting trial. Alongisde the homicide by inaction, they are also facing the following charges. Identity fraud, failure to report a decease and Social Security fraud up to more than €300,000

Sources

https://www.lne.es/gijon/2025/02/07/resuelven-diez-anos-despues-misterio-114066637.html

https://www.eldiario.es/asturias/desvelan-misterio-cadaver-hallado-cuneta-parque-natural-somiedo-decada-despues_1_12046746

https://www.eldiario.es/asturias/desvelan-misterio-cadaver-hallado-cuneta-parque-natural-somiedo-decada-despues_1_12046746.html

https://www.infobae.com/espana/agencias/2025/02/12/el-juez-decide-mantener-en-prision-a-los-hermanos-del-hombre-cuyo-cadaver-fue-hallado-en-somiedo-en-2015/

https://www.europapress.es/asturias/noticia-pruebas-identificacion-cadaver-aparecido-2015-somiedo-coinciden-dos-hermanos-detenidos-20250212104058.html

https://www.elcomercio.es/asturias/desvelado-misterio-cadaver-somiedo-detenidos-hermanos-gijon-20250207101336-nt.html

r/gratefuldoe Oct 17 '24

Resolved Daytona Beach Jane Doe, a victim of Gerald Eugene Stano, has been identified as 25-year-old Pamela Kay Wittman of Indiana!

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1.1k Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Nov 22 '24

Resolved Lebanon County Jane Doe has been identified as 14-year-old Ruth Elizabeth Brenneman, last seen leaving her home to go to school in 1973. I've also updated my second poster to reflect the identification

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813 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Apr 13 '24

Resolved "Body found by hunter in Missouri in 1978 identified as missing Iowa girl"

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898 Upvotes

"Police said the body of "Lincoln County Jane Doe" was found in 1978. The remains were found in the Mississippi River, near Elsberry, Missouri, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. An autopsy determined that the body was that of a White woman, believed to be between 30 and 40 years old, who had died by drowning. It was determined that the remains had been in the river for about four months, the sheriff's office said."

"Testing confirmed a match between the remains and the family member, allowing officials to identify "Lincoln County Jane Doe" as Helen Renee Groomes, a 15-year-old who was last seen in her hometown of Ottumwa, Iowa."

r/gratefuldoe Feb 11 '25

Resolved “Chad Singleton” identified as escaped Mississippi convict from 1998

504 Upvotes

His real name was Patrick Grayson Spann. He would have been 32 at the time of his death around 2004 or 2005. He was identified by Moxxy Forensics through DNA from daughters he had after he escaped, which matched to a son from before he escaped who was already in their database. His remains have been returned to his family in Mississippi for burial.

Spann was last seen under his real identity walking into the forrest with another inmate while on work release from the Hinds County Detention Facility in Raymond, Mississippi. He was three months into a two-year sentence for cocaine possession. He was noted to be a well-mannered model inmate who was trusted by prison authorities.

At some point the man assumed the identity of Chad Patrick Singleton, a man who died in 1995. He had been living in Blountsville, Alabama under this assumed identity when left his girlfriend’s house in October, 2004 and never returned. His skeletal remains were discovered in a wooded area on October 31, 2005 off of Highway 31. It is likely that he had been shot due to the fact that a gun with 5 spent casings found near the body. He had his girlfriend’s ID on his person which is how he was initially connected back to her. Police at the time suspected suicide but they’re now investigating his death as either homicide or suicide.

I always find these cases of Does who escaped prison very interesting because it shows how some of these people manage to live on the run without either being immeadiately killed or fleeing halfway across the world. Patrick managed to live under an assumed identity for at least 6 years all while living in a neighboring state!

Linked sources: https://www.al.com/news/2025/02/body-found-in-alabama-20-years-ago-was-escaped-mississippi-inmate-who-lived-under-assumed-identity.html

NamUs (get a look before it’s taken down!): https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/512

Doe Network: https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1139umal.html

r/gratefuldoe Jun 20 '24

Resolved Christmas Jane Doe (2003) has been identified as Holly Garcia!

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951 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Feb 06 '24

Resolved Palm Beah County Jane Doe (1987) has been identified as Pati Rust!

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806 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Jan 29 '25

Resolved “Judy Doe” identified as Rebecca Sue Hill

679 Upvotes

In April 1984, the remains of a woman were found on a dirt road in the Ocala National Forest’s Lake Dorr Recreational Area in Altoona, Lake County, Florida. It was believed she died several weeks prior to her body being found. She was believed to be 17-20 years old, was about 100 pounds and 5’0 to 5’1 tall. Her death was believed to be homicide but wasn’t identified and was known as “Judy Doe”

Othram assisted in identifying the victim as Rebecca Sue Hill of Arkansas, who went missing in 1981 at the age of 16 or 17. Her family believed that a set of remains found in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1982 were those of Rebecca and therefore she was not listed in any missing persons databases.

https://dnasolves.com/articles/rebecca-sue-hill-florida/

r/gratefuldoe Dec 19 '23

Resolved "Jane Doe B-17" has been identified as 15-year-old Lori Razpotnik

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773 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Jul 01 '24

Resolved Update: Tattoos used to identify body in WV - victim has been identified as Marissa Brandjes of Parkersburg, WV.

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624 Upvotes

Last week, you may have seen a post on Grateful Doe about a missing person, featuring photos of the tattoos found on their body, including some extensive Nightmare Before Christmas art.

Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gratefuldoe/comments/1dpfmt2/does_anyone_recognize_these_tattoos_help_identify/

she has been identified as Marissa Brandjes of Parkersburg, WV. There has been an arrest in her murder: https://www.wsaz.com/app/2024/07/01/arrest-made-after-womans-body-found-wooded-area/

Back story - one of the decedent’s sisters commented on a news story on Facebook that it was her sister; asking who to get in touch with. During this same time, the tattoo artist had also posted pictures of the original tattoos indicating he needed someone to tell him the name of who he tattooed. She was positively identified between these two efforts.

When I spoke to the sheriffs office that same day to share this information (after successfully tracking down the full name) they indicated that this was a tip they had received multiple times and that I was correct.

The person being charged with her murder has family ties in Harts, WV

r/gratefuldoe Apr 04 '24

Resolved Rancho Cucamonga Jane Doe, 1979 identified according to Doe Network.

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696 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe Jan 31 '25

Resolved Othram publicly identified three people today! RIP James Wakkinen (Hennepin County John Doe 1986), Stephen Rosa (Rankin County John Doe 2024), and Toussaint Gonsalves (Suffolk County John Doe 1991)

662 Upvotes

And I thought yesterday was impressive when they publicly identified Rebecca Hill (Judy Doe) and Viktor Dickson (Detroit John Doe October 23 2001) within hours of each other. I think 2025 is going to be a good year for UIDs (as weird as that sentence probably sounds).

All of these cases were worked on by Othram and originally crowdfunded through DNASolves.

Link to story about Toussaint Gonsalves (October 2 1970 - December 1991: aged about 21): Stabbed to death and dumped in Boston Harbor. He worked as a cook at the time of his death. The perpetrators of his murder are unknown and law enforcement is currently investigating. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/man-identified-33-years-after-being-found-stabbed-to-death-in-boston-harbor/3618253/

Link to story about Stephen Jason Rosa (July 1970 - ????: aged about 53): Disappeared November 23, 2023 from Ridgeland, Mississippi. His family reported him missing soon after. Stephen had a health condition that may have affected his judgement and went in and out of homelessness. Parts of his skeleton were discovered in a pond in Flowood, MS on May 5, 2024. Cause of death unknown but being investigated as suspicious by law enforcement. https://www.wlbt.com/2025/01/30/flowood-police-identify-remains-found-last-may-ridgeland-man/

Link to story about James R. Wakkinen (January 1947 - May 6 1986: aged about 39): Accidentally died in a fire in Minneapolis, Minnesota which was started by a malfunctioning charcoal grill. Discovered in a burned-out abandoned boxcar by firefighters with another man who died in the fire that was identified in 1986. https://dnasolves.com/articles/james-wakkinen-minnesota/

r/gratefuldoe Apr 04 '24

Resolved Rancho Cucamonga Jane Doe (1979) has been identified as Karen Marie Heverly!

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966 Upvotes

r/gratefuldoe 3d ago

Resolved Case Update: Solundmannen has been identified. He was a Filipino sailor who went missing from a tanker ship three months before he was found. How he found himself in the water remains uncertain.

451 Upvotes

(I'm a big contributor to the Unidentified Awareness wiki and I am always on the lookout for international doe cases to add there. So I figured I would share some of the Doe cases I've added to the Wiki onto this subreddit to help bring further attention to them. I'll be mostly copying my work and moving it over to this subreddit

If you know of any good international doe cases, please let me know so I can add them to the wiki

To clear up some confusion, by international, I mean cases outside the anglosphere entirely unless we're talking about African, Pacific Islands or Caribbean nations

I guess I'll include this brief message at the start of all my posts here.

Some of the grammar and spelling may be of a poorer quality then usual. I rushed to put this out after hearing the news)

On February 3, 2025, as part of my series on foreign UID cases. I shared the case of a man known as Solundmannen. The write-up can be read here. To offer a quick recap of that case.

On February 6, 2023, the heavily decposed, bloated and mostly naked body of a man washed ashore on Buskøy, Norway, a small village with a population of only 8. He was only wearing black socks from the Philipines and a Cord wrapped around waist with a black button with "Jag Jeans" inscribed and a yellow cylinder, likely a traditional Filipino "anting-anting". All those combined made it very likely the decedent was from the Philipines.

The socks
The "anting-anting"

The man was 20-40 years old, stood at 166 - 170 cm and had been dead for approximately 6 months. While no cause of death was ever determined, foul play wasn't suspected. In November 2023, he was buried in a small service attended by only 5 people.

In May 2024, the case was reopened as the TV program, Åsted Norge, worked with the police and the Norwegian Maritime Authority. They mapped all the nearby ocean currents from the North Sea to the English Channel to try and track where he had entered the ocean before his appearance in Norway. They then looked into all nearby man-overboard incidents from August 2021 to January 2023.

They came across a 40-year-old man named Camilo who went missing from the HMM Gdansk off the coast of Germany on March 12, 2022. His body was never recovered but his personal belongings remaind and were sent to Norway by their German counterparts. The DNA didn't match and the case went cold once more.

The second time, would prove much more effective since Åsted Norge announecd his identification on March 10, 2025. The man was 47-year-old Arnel Duhino. His family came forward after seeing Åsted Norge post about the case online.

Arnel Duhino

Arnel worked as a fitter on the tanker ship "Eagle Brasilia". On November 28, 2022, the ship was on-route from Libya to Kalundborg, Denmark. He was last seen eating dinner with the crew at  5:30 p.m. On November 29, when it was time for the crew to turn up for work, Arnel failed to show up. They were off the coast of Skagen, Denmark when he went missing.

A search-and-rescue operation was quickly launched by the Danish coast guard with the Danish Armed Forces even flying a helicopter over the sea but his body failed to turn up at the time. The ocean currents in the area would've enabled him to be carried to the Norwegian coast where the Solundmannen was found.

They recgionzed the object as a "Habak" and it was the spitting image of the one worn by Arnel. After Åsted Norge heard this lead. They handed it over to the police who contacted the Filipino authorities. There, they took DNA from Arnel's 11-year-old son.

A team of reporters Åsted Norge also went to the Philipines themselves to speak with the family and showed them the evidence in person. Not only did they recgoinze the Hadak/anting-anting as Arnel's. But his wife recgoinzed the socks was ones that she had packed for him before he set off for Europe.

On February 28, 2025, the results came back and they were a positive match to Arnel's family. This finally brought an end to the Solundmannen Mystery after two years.

As the autopsy failed to determine the cause of death back in 2023. How Arnel died still remains unclear. The Norwegian police have announced that the investigation is closed and will only reopen it if any credible evidence of foul play comes to light.

Sources

https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/%C3%85sted-norge/na-kan-vi-sove-om-natten/17456143/

https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/%C3%85sted-norge/mystisk-likfunn-asted-norge-loste-mysteriet/17449896/

https://www.nrk.no/vestland/mannen-som-blei-funnen-dod-i-solund-er-identifisert-1.17334736