Latest news with #InvestigativeGeneticGenealogyCenter
NBC News
5 days ago
- Science
- NBC News
Skeletal remains found at Jersey Shore identified as 19th century boat captain
There's been a break in 30-year-old cold case mystery at the Jersey Shore after experts confirmed skeletal remains found on three beaches belonged to a 19th-century boat captain. The bones from a leg, arm and fragments of a cranium discovered on the beaches of Ocean City, Margate and Longport between 1995 and 2013 had yielded no answers until now. Authorities said the remains belong to 29-year-old Captain Henry Goodsell, who died at sea 181 years ago. Advances in DNA technology first tied the bones to the same person after cold case detectives with the state police turned to the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey last year. 'Our job was to figure out who that individual was that the bones belonged to,' Cairenn Binder of the college's IGG Center said. Initially, experts weren't even sure how old the bones were. 'We kind of kept going back and forth between, are they historic? Are they not historic?' New Jersey State Police Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Anna Delaney said. 'This is absolutely amazing because after all of this time, Henry has his name.' Students at the school launched a search for genetic relatives and built out family trees that revealed ancestral ties to Connecticut. They also started looking into records of shipwrecks. It was that creative step that really helped them narrow in on the person's identity. 'Delving into those they identified this ship, which then led to the ship captain,' Ramapo's IGG Center Director David Gurney explained. Goodsell was the captain of the Oriental which was a schooner that was transporting marble from Connecticut to Philadelphia for Girard College in 1844. But, on that voyage, the Oriental went down just off of the coast of Brigantine and the entire crew was killed. Investigators were able to track down Goodsell's great-great-granddaughter in Maryland. She provided a DNA sample that did confirm the captain's identity. 'To our knowledge, this is the oldest case that's ever been solved with investigative genetic genealogy,' Binder said.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Skull found on New Jersey beach linked to 19th century shipwreck
In 1995, a mystery skull washed onto a beach in Longport, New Jersey. Four years later, additional bone fragments were discovered less than two miles away on a shore in the neighboring southern New Jersey town of Margate. It would take another 14 years for even more skeletal remains to arrive on a beach another five miles away in Ocean City. But over those three decades, forensic experts and law enforcement couldn't put a name to the individual known only as 'Scattered Man John Doe.' After 30 years, the mystery has finally been solved thanks to a combination of genetic testing, historical research, and archival analysis. 'Scattered Man John Doe' wasn't a victim of foul play—he wasn't even a comparatively recent death. Instead, the bones belong to Henry Goodsell, a 29-year-old merchant ship captain who perished along with his crew during a storm in the winter of 1844. The identification comes two years after state law enforcement reached out to the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center. After sending bone samples to Intermountain Forensics, a nonprofit dedicated to identifying missing person remains, Ramapo undergraduates began crossreferencing archival files in the hopes of finding a lead. Genetic analysis results traced ancestry as far back as the 1600s, to Connecticut's Litchfield and Fairfield counties. From there, they also started investigating newspaper reports of any shipwrecks off the coast of New Jersey. Eventually, the students flagged two articles dated from December 20 and 24, 1844. 'The schooner Oriental… was lost on the evening of the 4th on Brigantine shoals and all hands with her,' read the Friday edition of the York Democratic Press. According to the paper's account, the ship left Bridgeport, Connecticut for Philadelphia with around 60 tons of marble intended for Girard College. While cautioning that it was 'possible that the crew had taken off, and that the vessel had been abandoned. Four days later, however, newspapers across the northeast confirmed the worst case outcome. 'The Bridgeport Standard (Conn.) has further accounts from this ill-fated vessel, which render it certain that all on board must have perished,' reported the Boston Daily Bee on December 24. The consensus at the time was that the Oriental likely sprung a leak before sinking less than a mile from the shoreline, but an intense storm prevented any rescue attempts. All five crew members including Capt. Goodsell ultimately drowned, but only one sailor 'was thrown on the shore' five miles away. Authorities later identified him as John Keith before seeing that he was 'decently buried,' according to the Daily Bee. Capt. Goodsell left behind a wife and three children. After digging deeper into his family tree, the students suggested he warranted a closer look from the New Jersey State Police (NJSP). On March 7, 2025, authorities collected a DNA reference sample from one of Goodsell's great-great grandchildren. One month later, the NJSP confirmed 'Scattered Man John Doe' to be the late Capt. Goodsell. 'The ability to bring answers to families—even generations later—shows how far science and dedication can take us,' NJSP superintendent Col. Patrick Callahan said in a university announcement on May 21. While Goodsell marks the school's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center's 92nd consultancy project, Ramapo College reports it is one of the oldest cold case files ever solved using this advanced type of investigative genealogy.
