Hello everyone! As always, thank you for all your votes and comments under my post about Nanci Britner- I hope that she will be found soon.
Today I'd like to highlight a strange Doe case.
DISCOVERY
On the 20th of June, shortly before 10 PM, a call was made to a fire department in Burlington County in New Jersey, USA. The caller, who was a passerby, saw a brush fire and could smell smoke.
When the firefighters arrived at the scene, they found a badly burned body in a desolated wooded area between Neck Road and Dulty's Lane, about 300 yards (~0.27 km) away from the nearest road. The victim laid in a pile of sticks that had been arranged into a rectangle to create a sort of funeral pyre. Before they died, they seemingly got undressed, put their clothes in one corner, laid on one of the sticks, and set fire to their construction. An empty canister had been found at the scene as well- it's believed that the canister contained an accelerant of some sort due to how high the temperature of the fire was. It was impossible to tell what kind of accelerant the canister contained, however, as the interior of it got burned in the fire. One of the officers described the scene like this: "there were sticks that were 1/2 to 3/4-inch wide, put down parallel to each other, like a platform on the ground and laid right on ground, surrounded by larger limbs that were used to outline the perimeter of this rectangular area".
The body was later taken to be forensically processed. The deceased was a Black man, between 21 and 28 years in age (younger than 30). He was about 5'7" (67 inch - 171 cm) and about 135 lbs (61 kg). The man had been badly burned, which rendered him "not recognizable", though a forensic sketch of his face exists. All of John's hair had been burned away, and his eye color is unknown (but some sources say that both his eyes and hair were brown). A few of his teeth were missing, and the sockets in the gums were closed, meaning that they were lost a long time ago. Tooth #30 had been extracted, and tooth #29 had a temporary filling. The death was ruled a probable suicide or an accident- no signs of foul play were found. It was determined that the victim died due to his burns, and not due to smoke inhalation.
The clothes found at the scene were charred in the fire. The deceased owned two keys- one of them was made at the 4Trevors Lock Company, 2123 7th Avenue, New York City, and the other was made at Lenox Hardware, 613 Lenox Avenue, New York City. Other items that allegedly belonged to him were a button with the word "Lees" on it and a strange object made of 11 stiff metal wires ("the type used for meat skewers", according to Claus Speth, who was the medical examiner in this case) arranged in the shape of a pyramid.
CONCLUSION
The investigators seem to believe that the victim was engaging in some kind of occult ritual. 20th of June is the eve of the summer solstice, which might be a significant date for different occult beliefs; There are pagan rituals relating to the solstice in which a person has to lie close to a fire to ward off evil spirits. According to Lt. Richard Serafin, who was involved with the case at the time, there was no known occult/cult activity in Burlington county when the man was found.
Based on the keys that were found, it's believed that John might've had ties to the Harlem area in New York.
John's dentals are available; His fingerprints aren't, given that they were likely destroyed by the fire. His DNA is allegedly available, but he isn't currently undergoing genetic genealogy reaserch (as far as we know).
If you have any information about John's identity, contact the Burlington County Medical Examiner Office at (609) 702-7030 (case number 03860352).
SOURCES:
- NamUS.gov
- doenetwork.org
- unidentified-wiki.com
John's websleuths.com thread