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How police identified a boy decades after his body was found

How police identified a boy decades after his body was found

Independent06-08-2025
A four-year-old boy, Carl Matthew Bryant, found murdered in Lorton, Virginia, in June 1972, has been identified over 50 years later using advanced DNA testing.
Bryant died from blunt force trauma, but the exact circumstances leading to his death remain a mystery despite his identification.
Police utilised advanced DNA testing and forensic-grade genome sequencing, including a few millimetres of hair, to trace his family and confirm his identity through his mother, Vera Bryant, whose body was exhumed.
Detectives suspect Bryant's mother, Vera Bryant (now deceased), and her then-boyfriend, James Hedgepeth (also deceased), were involved in his murder.
The case is further complicated by the disappearance and presumed murder of Bryant's six-month-old brother, James, whose body has never been found.
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