Crews in Beaver County dug up the graves of four people who have never been identified on Tuesday, hoping modern DNA testing can finally give them names. The group includes a woman whose embalmed head was found abandoned in the woods nearly 12 years ago, two men pulled from the Ohio River decades ago, and an infant discovered in a dump in 1968.
According to WPXI, the exhumations were carried out under a federal grant awarded to the University of South Florida. Researchers with the university reached out to Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible about the possibility of digging up the embalmed head for another round of DNA testing, the station reports. WPXI reporter Andrew Havranek spoke with Bible from the exhumation scene about the chance of finally cracking the cold cases.
A Head Found in the Woods, Buried Without a Name
The embalmed head was discovered by a resident walking along Mason Road on December 12, 2014, according to the Butler Eagle. About a year later, with no identification made, the woman was buried in Beaver Cemetery under the name Jane Doe, the paper reported at the time. A later report from PennLive found that earlier DNA testing on the head had failed to produce a usable result, since the embalming chemicals had destroyed any potential genetic material that investigators might have otherwise recovered.
The other three graves exhumed this week belong to equally old mysteries. WPXI reports that two adult John Does were both pulled from the Ohio River sometime in the 1960s, while a Baby Jane Doe was found in a dump in 1968. Police said at the time that they believed the infant had been left there alive and covered with fiberglass insulation, per the station's reporting.
A Long-Shot Effort That Has Worked Before
Exhumations like these are uncommon, and expensive relative to the thin budgets typically set aside for cold cases. A Pennsylvania State Police corporal told WHYY that exhuming bodies is rare precisely because there is not much money set aside for it, estimating that one such visit to Maple Hill Cemetery cost a few thousand dollars. The same report cited estimates that roughly 40,000 unidentified bodies remain across the United States, underscoring how common cases like Beaver County's four graves actually are nationwide.
Pennsylvania has leaned on exhumations before in hopes of resolving cases that otherwise would stay cold forever. In 2016, state police exhumed three unidentified homicide victims from one cemetery and an infant boy from another near Wilkes-Barre, according to a report from LMTonline, with investigators planning facial reconstructions, chemical isotope testing, and DNA collection funded by a National Institute of Justice grant. That same outlet's reporting detailed how the effort combined old-fashioned detective work with newer forensic science to chase leads that had gone nowhere for decades.
Those kinds of efforts have occasionally paid off. NBC News reported that investigators in a separate Pennsylvania case partnered with Othram Labs in March 2024 for DNA extraction and built out a family tree from the results, eventually identifying a woman known only as Penny Doe as Windy Buchanan some 36 years after her remains were first found. It is the kind of breakthrough that keeps investigators returning to old graves even when the odds of success are long.
For now, Beaver County's four cases remain open, with the exhumed remains set to head for testing under the University of South Florida grant. WPXI's Channel 11 News planned to air a full report on the exhumations at 5 and 6 p.m.
