Man With No Hands /// 534 | Forensic Files

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[Music] [Music] so [Music] a 31-year-old murder case is getting fresh attention tonight kentucky state
police call it the case of the man with no hands now this is a rendering of what
the man might look like now detectives are turning to dna experts in hopes that it will unearth some new leads walter
smith randolph is here after talking to investigators walter what did they say well paul and kyle technology has
changed immensely since this man was found dead in a barn back in 1989 investigators hope running his dna
through genetic systems will give them the answers they've been searching for 31 years have come and gone with no
answers kentucky state police want to know who this man is he was found dead with his hands cut off in a tobacco barn
near dry ridge this is what police told us back in 2017 when the body was exhumed he deserved to go back home
his family deserved to know where he was i mean he was buried in grant county in
a popper's grave with no no headstone back in 2017 dna was taken and entered into a federal database but since then
genealogy sites like 23andme and ancestry have emerged that's why ksp is taking a closer look technology has come
so far um and it's it it makes our job a little bit easier and you know bottom of the line is is we want to
solve these cases and we want to bring justice where justice is served the dna doe project will now build a
family tree in hopes of tracking down relatives of the john doe it is a very uh peculiar and just an odd case um you
know just the whole circumstance surrounding it and it's why it's been so difficult for us to
to be able to make headway police have previously thought this case may be connected to the mob besides this
digitally enhanced picture police don't have much to go on since the hands were removed that's why they're hoping new
dna technology will be the break they need in this case it seems like as we get technological advances some of these
old cases we may in fact solve more of these [Music] on sunday afternoon april 9
1989 around 2 45 in the afternoon farmer c.w adams known as billy walked into his
large barn adams was a tobacco farmer in dry ridge kentucky in rural grant county his farm
was located on route 22. this is the main road through dry ridge called main street which runs north to south
through the town of williamstown to dry ridge about four miles apart and in dry ridge it turns west and heads out of
town into very rural pasture and farmland an overhead view using google maps shows nothing but fields and
farmland for miles and miles on either side of this part of route 22. this even today captain in 2021
it was out there that farmer adams barn sat on the roadside in 1989. neither dry
ridge nor williamstown is exactly cosmopolitan dry ridge is a rural town with the
population in 2010 of just 2100 people located in grant county ironically although it's named dry ridge
the area is known for its mineral water wells which allegedly have healing powers
williamstown is a bit larger with the population of nearly 4 000 in 2010 it serves as the county seat but we are
still talking about tiny towns that are off of the beaten path however the williamstown dry ridge
downtown areas are right off of a major interstate this is interstate 75 one of the longest highways in the united
states from this area captain this general area that we're talking about you could be in
cincinnati in approximately 40 minutes so here we have farmer adams who utilizes this barn for his tobacco
harvest it's quite a large barn the kind made out of old gray barn wood boards unfortunately we do not know exactly
what happened when he walked into this barn at 2 45 pm on april 9th and it's never been
discussed at all how he found what he found we also don't know when was the last
time that he was inside of this barn and that is a question for obvious reasons that has significant
implications given what adams was about to find now in the barn adams found a stack of items
these would be typical items he expected to find inside of this barn in a pile but he did not expect to find
them in this pile and it was extremely puzzling to him so he starts removing these items from this
pile pulling items from the pile returning them to their intended locations and then he stopped because
under this pile was the body of a large man the large man was naked with no clothing
nearby and adams could tell that there was no rush to call the paramedics one look at
him told him that this man was beyond help he was dead and had been dead for quite
some time the call to the kentucky state police came in at 2 50 p.m and officers arrived
on the scene at 3 15 that afternoon well like you said this is roughly 40 45 minutes away from cincinnati there's so
many rural areas around these parts it'd be a perfect place to dump a victim yes
you're exactly right captain and for me that's what makes it even more confusing
as to why the barn was utilized in the first place but the people out there that are familiar
with this story now this is one of our lesser known stories that we're covering this week but there will be people in
the greater cincinnati area and in the state of kentucky that have probably heard of this case before again it's
30 years old we are trying to identify this homicide victim and the kentucky state police have done a good
job of keeping this case in the news throughout the years it's never really made national news though so a lot of
people will be hearing this for the first time but those of you familiar with this case you're probably sitting
at home or in your car or in your garage going wait a second i thought that this
guy when they found him in that tobacco barn that he was hanging inside the barn
and there are several news articles that say that that in fact was what was going
on but guess what it's simply not true the hanging part of this story is all a fallacy it never happened at all here is
what we know to be true the kentucky state police the agency in charge of this case has released very
little information about the whole situation they are honing in on this case and have been for
the last couple of years because new technology is making it a situation where they think they can identify this
guy sooner rather than later so this is very much an active case for the kentucky state police and kudos to them
for keeping it not just active in the news and media but also active on their desk right and
an active investigation as far as they're concerned yeah they are fully charged and fully invested in
identifying this homicide victim you can tell by the title of this case that it doesn't need any more hype but you see
that from time to time and different cases where the legend of the case becomes a little more
grandiose yes and this will be a case where we will learn some more information throughout the
years today there's still not a lot known about this case and early on that was certainly the case because the early
articles and statements about the man found in the barn all say consistently at first that it was not apparent what
had killed this man later they would tell us what in fact killed the man that they found in the barn now
early on though captain this is because the body itself was very badly decomposed his face was described as not
recognizable due to the level of breakdown of the facial tissues he was estimated to have been dead for at least
a week probably two but the medical examiner was able to determine that the cause of death was
two gunshot wounds to the back of the head his hands had been cut off the wounds to
the lower arms at the wrist level indicated to the experienced medical examiner that the man's hands had been
deliberately severed and the hands weren't anywhere to be found in fact to this very day they have never been
located the kentucky state police has never revealed any information about the investigation that took place at the
location where the man was found meaning they've investigated the barn the barn owner the property owners
but we don't know what that all entailed and what their findings were in regard to the barn the
barn owner and such we do know that they executed a thorough search of the barn and the surrounding areas as one would
expect in fact we were able to get our hands on the incident report that indicates that the barn was cleared
after seven hours or so hate to be captain obvious but they took the victim's hands
so it'd be harder to identify the victim yes and as we said captain no clothing was found the man in the barn was naked
no clothes no jewelry nothing the man's missing hands were nowhere to be seen well obviously the hands would have
fingerprints and so you could look into a database of those take the jewelry those would be
identifiers take the clothes that would be another identifier shoes even would be a identifier and we've seen in some
cases too where people remove cut skin to remove tattoos which would be identifiers as well according to the
kentucky state police and these are their words that echo what you just said here captain quote someone had
physically removed them from his arms talking about the hands continuing on they say fingerprints were a large part
of technology in that time we still utilize it today but they they were very limited the implication
was that whoever had cut off the man's hands did so in order to keep his identity a secret and so far here we sit
all these years later and it has worked well when you read the description of this man one thing that jumps out is
he's six five that means he's very tall so when i heard that it's very surprising that he has not
been identified i agree captain and that sets off some red flags for me because here we are more than 30 years later the
man with no hands no identifying personal possessions or marks and with no recognizable facial features
were sitting here going who the man in the barn was remains a mystery and all investigators had to go on to identify
him was that limited physical description of his remains which is as follows age they put his age approximately in
his 30s generally believed to be somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 years of age he's described as a white male
height six foot five inches tall and they even break that down saying 77 inches i've seen some descriptions
captain that have the victim listed at six four but most generally say six five two
hundred and twenty pounds and as you said that's a key factor in this case here just let that
sink in for a bit this guy was six foot five inches that is an exceptionally large human being a missing person's
report of a missing man of that size would be fairly easy to connect to a victim right
but we can tell you that although this physical description of the grant county john doe as some have called him
has been entered into namus and the dna doe project databases and his case information is listed in vicap and ncic
he has never been identified and it is believed by the investigators and i share that
opinion as well that there is no missing persons report that was ever filed on him
and if there was it's never been able to be a report that the kentucky state police have been able to get their hands
on or their eyeballs on because six foot five there's not a ton of people that meet that requirement couple things
one this individual could have no family members maybe was only child maybe his parents
died younger or possibly he's from a very small town from a lot further away than around let's say the kentucky slash
cincinnati area and so if he went missing in like washington state or something in a very
small town maybe they're not connecting the dots that their son that maybe that their son ended up in a
barn in kentucky let's see what else we know about this guy from a physical standpoint uh his
head still had plenty of hair on it enough to tell investigators that he wore it short and tight basically his
hair was in a crew cut with short well-maintained sideburns as for eye color that is listed in every
source that i've been able to see states unknown this seems likely because after death circulation of oxygen to the
eyes and frankly everywhere else ceases so the pupils dilate and the cornea becomes opaque
the eyes obtain a distinct blue white haze over their surface which can obscure the true eye color
of the deceased and individual in any event grant county john doe his eyes are of unknown color so that
does not help to identify him well this report says he's 6'5 white man around 220 pounds
with brown hair and brown eyes there is an fbi vicap alert poster relating to the grant county john doe which contains
more information about his appearance besides the estimated height and weight and brown hair the poster notes that the
grant county john doe also has a previously healed broken nose and if you go to fbi.gov click on the
vicap tab there you'll be able to find a list of unidentified remains that they have listed on the fbi website
the victim also had something that i'm not going to try to pronounce here not in the garage i'm never going to try
to pronounce it go for it i'm going to spell it out it's p l a g i o c e p h a l y so this is also known as flat
head syndrome per the stanford health website this is not something that is genetic
but can be caused by a few different things one is a muscle tightness on one side of the neck so when the person is a
baby they prefer holding the head to one side or in one position while lying down which then results in
that side of the head flattening over time it could be a result of prematurity you
know we have skull bones that are softer than full term babies and they tend to move their heads less
often again the head would flatten while lying in the same position for long amounts of time
it also could be a result of in utero crowding this can occur when there are twins
or multiples or if the mother has large fibroids or an abnormally shaped uterus so
it's not super likely captain but given that information there's a possibility that our john doe
may have a twin out there or had a twin at one time yeah you can actually get a plastic surgery
for this condition this is also when you hear about doctors wanting to put a baby into a helmet
that's normally because this condition is getting worse and they can correct it by having the child wear a helmet for a
certain period of time now there's two kind of versions of this one where the back of the head is flat
and where the head is misshaped it seems like his version is the one where your head would
be flat on an area but not on the back of the head so causing his call to be like misshaped but we're not doctors
we're just two dumb guys that sniff gasoline in the garage so of course we have no idea which of these factors are
the case here for our man with no hands but the key thing is to know that this would
be an identifier for somebody out there his skull was flattened enough to be noted on the physical description of him
utilized by law enforcement and missing persons organizations the kentucky state
police have said quote he had a particularly shaped head a flat head the back of his head was flat that's
specific if someone is trying to identify him end quote again i can't get over the fact that nobody's identified
this individual when he's six foot five inches tall you have to wonder captain if the person or person's which i think
is probably more likely persons responsible for leaving him in this barn if they knew
that he would in fact be identified by fingerprints not everybody out there walking around
on this planet or in this country or even the state of kentucky have been fingerprinted you're right you have to
have those fingerprints on file somewhere to have something to match them to now you wonder would these would the
perpetrators here know or have suspicion to believe that he would be would have been
fingerprinted at some point either because he was arrested or locked up or there are many jobs that require
you to go and get fingerprinted or a thorough background check to be able to work
in that position or work with that company i can't find it in the reports i've looked at
but was there a toxicology report done my guess is yes um but we don't have that information
they're keeping that information to themselves well hang on just a minute here captain because we
have something else that could help with possibly identifying this individual so
we have what they state this is the final piece i would say of the physical description of our john
doe it said he had distinctive dental work so according to the fbi it was expensive and extensive
specifically when our victim was alive he had a quote perfect smile the dental work included a 10 unit porcelain fixed
porcelain to metal bridge with missing teeth replaced with porcelain pontics i believe is how you
say that this is a word that i had not heard before but thanks to an internet search
i know that pontic is an artificial tooth attached to a fixed dental prosthesis basically it's a fake tooth
that looks real and looks really good and it's permanently attached there is something else that we know and
you were dancing on this captain is that we know how he died as we said that the
shots that killed this individual were two to the back of the head and one thing that they have released is
that it came from a 22 caliber weapon so to recap real quick we have a john doe that was found naked in a barn
on kentucky route 22 outside of dry ridge kentucky john doe was found shot in the back of the head capped twice
execution style with a 22 his hands were cut off to evade identification he was hidden under a bunch of
barn items or things that would be stored in this barn he had a broken nose and his teeth had been replaced at some
point with pricey fakes he had a crew cut and he was a very large man six foot five inches tall 220 pounds
approximately [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're back cheers mates cheers captain
it makes you wonder when the when the dental surgery was done because maybe again like i said this guy
has family members maybe they passed on maybe he had some dental issues and then had them
recently taken care of and and so he would have been the one responsible for this if it was done when he was a little
bit younger that makes you wonder if somebody cared so much about him to make sure that he had a perfect smile
you would think somebody'd be coming out of the woodwork saying that's my son or
that's my brother or whoever it is that's where we come in and we try to help the kentucky state
police because like i said i couldn't find a situation where this is nationally known
news or information yeah it's on fbi.gov it's on some other websites and if you go search around the internet you're
going to find information on this case or little news clips but this is not something that i think
everybody was aware of and when you have a situation where this guy very likely is not from anywhere near
the immediate area if the right information doesn't hit the right person's ear balls or eyeballs
then we have a situation where they can't go well that was my son or that was my brother or whomever now
the other thing too that's difficult is we circle back to a missing person's report right why don't we have a missing
person's report of somebody that's this height and this weight again it's it's not normal for people to be this large
and my mind starts to go to the idea of well maybe this guy didn't originate from this country
and is there a chance that he wasn't here very long before whatever happened to him happened right
right this homicide for whatever reason went down is there a chance that he wasn't here
very long and mom and dad brother and sister or any of his close relatives are just
simply not in this country to to say that he's missing maybe they've told whomever someplace else
we've not heard from him we've not heard from our son or our brother or our cousin in all these years
and so i'm sure they're worried about what has happened to him and that's why the kentucky state police
want so badly to identify him for a multitude of reasons one to tell his family hey we found we got bad news but
we found your loved one furthermore we want to seek some justice for this guy we have no idea who the
suspects can be when we don't even know who the victim is now one piece of information
that has been disclosed that i find to be very interesting is that the kentucky state police has stated publicly that
the man found in the barn was killed elsewhere we don't know because they've not given us the details of such how
they determined this but we can deduce it they were probably able to determine that he
was not shot in the barn because there was no gunshot spatter there was no shells there was no
residue or large amounts of blood found in the barn itself right so that seems pretty
pretty simple but presumably if none of this is found it's telling investigators that the
murder and mutilation did not go down in the barn and again this is interesting because remember he's a large man
if he was already dead when he was placed in this tobacco barn as opposed to being forced to walk into
the barn and then being shot then it would almost certainly have required two people to transport him in a vehicle and
then move the body into the barn right it's my opinion i think it's safe to say that this
was likely a two-man job if not more i don't see how look captain you are a specimen you are
a physical specimen adonis and i do not see how one person even of your strength
could have possibly moved a 220 pound dead weight well you have to lift with your legs that distance to the barn well
when they mention that it could possibly be mob related i i'd also throw out the
idea of maybe a cartel or something because now go with me on this theory it might be a little far-fetched but if you
look at the distance between williamstown and portsmouth ohio portsmouth ohio for
a long time has been a kind of a hub to have opioids and and other drugs and they channel from portsmouth to
cincinnati to columbus for example and so if you were heading from portsmouth to cincinnati and something
happened once you shoot off one of those main roads you would find williamstown it's
interesting to me that they mentioned [Music] mafia or mentioned the mob do you think that's just because of the
severed hands i think that the severed hand certainly has something to do with it but i think that there's probably a
lot of factors and i'm with you i don't i think that they're using the the term mob related and again i want i want to
be clear to everybody out there in listener land they're saying possibly they're not locked in or married to this
idea that it has to be mob related but i feel like mob is a bit of a blanketed statement that could mean
any cartel any kind of organization working on the down low organize crime it could be related to that why again
you got to go back to the fact that this guy does not appear to have been reported missing
at any time it looks like whoever is responsible for this they either a knew what they were doing or b did a
really good job doing it for the first time well this is definitely one of the cases that we've covered
and maybe top of the list where when i see the picture that they've done of this victim
how lifelike it is i believe if we can get enough listeners to share this story and to share his picture
all over the internet somebody will come forward and identify this man after 30 years of not being identified well and
that's why i wanted to feature this case and feature it for the kentucky state police because again they are
very much invested in finding out who this individual was and i think that captain maybe we can push this story a
little further than what they've been able to do in their years of hard work and effort but
i think maybe we might have the ability to reach some more people at a greater distance that
they've been able to reach i will be taking his image and putting it on our instagram twitter facebook
at true crime garage it will also be front and center on our website at truecrimegarage.com
now it's never been published what the exact address or location of the barn was all
the reports simply say that it's located about seven and a half miles west of dry ridge
kentucky and the police report that we were able to get our hands on which it's a very
limited report it's a single page says that the victim was found inside a tobacco barn on
skillcroft sheet metal incorporated farm property located on kentucky route 22 seven and a half miles west of
dry ridge now we were able to do a little further digging and confirm the exact location
of the barn so it's located at 8100 taft highway if you follow route 22 on the map west from dry ridge you can see the
rural nature of the location of this large outbuilding it seems unlikely even almost impossible that
someone from out of town would stumble on this location and select this one barn in the middle
of nowhere at random as a reporter on local 12 tv news station pointed out whoever killed this
john doe went to a lot of trouble to hide his dead body he wasn't killed at the barn so someone likely drove
interstate 75 south or interstate 75 north took the dry ridge exit and drove seven miles out of town to pick out the
barn i directed horror films i would use tobacco barns and all my movies i think
they're absolutely creepy looking they almost look like there's uh like bats like big human-sized bats or
like the moth man is like hanging upside down if you don't know what a tobacco barn
looks like the first time you see one in person it can shake you up like what is that
and then once they explain it to you obviously it makes a lot more sense but it really looks like almost these giant
bats are hanging from the ceiling yeah tobacco leaves are large and nobody really likes bats
but you do not want to encounter a large group of really big ones right or mothman right
and so yeah i've never been personally been inside of a real-life tobacco barn but i've seen them on tv and seen the
tobacco leaves hanging from the rafters and i get a good idea of what you're talking about here captain yeah the
first time i came across when i was going onto my buddy's farm land and i parked the car and it was
it just became dark and all you could see is these things in the barn kind of swaying back and forth
and from a distance i was like are those bats or birds or or maybe even like deer carcasses just hanging like i
i couldn't tell what they were uh from that distance and like i said in the dark here's the thing for me and
while we're on the subject of the barn tv images of this barn show that it is a very large outbuilding it's very close
to the road in fact i would say almost right next to the road yeah it's not far the
road is a small two-lane roadway winding through the countryside in pasture land
if someone was looking for a structure to place the body in well then this barn would kind of just
jump out at you gotcha because it's very visible but to me that begs the question why inside
of the barn and why this barn there are plenty there's plenty of land around there hundreds of thousands of acres
where a body might never be found and look take this an extra step here clearly when they're removing the hands they
don't want their victim to be identified why because identification of this victim probably leads the authorities
directly to the killer or killers would be my guess and i'm guessing captain that kentucky state police that's why
they're holding back so much information in this case because they know that or believe that
to be true as well so why if you're so concerned about this man the victim being identified
why place him in a barn and then pile up a bunch of barn [ __ ] on top of this guy
why wouldn't you take him out in the middle of nowhere and bury him you know what i mean it seems to me like that
would be more likely or do we have a situation where there is reason that he was in that barn
that it has something to do with with persons close to the perpetrator or the perpetrators themselves again we know
that the owner barn owner property owner everybody was looked at and investigated
but we don't know what the finding or the results of that investigation was well a couple things here were they
trying to frame somebody or cast suspicion on somebody else i get what you know i'm picking up what you're
putting down but we're also again there's they're saying 220. he might have been a little heavier but
he's a big boy like you said it's close to the road if you have two individuals we can put him in this barn
try to conceal him that's going to give us a little extra time taking his clothes severing the hands this is going
to give us even more time but how far would they be able to carry this individual
from their car to this land i mean because if you just bury him in the middle of a field the
farmer is going to see that he's going to say well what the hell happened here so maybe they thought by
putting him in the barn that's close to the road we can conceal him because a lot of times when we we have
these victims that can be identified very quickly they're discarded on the side of the road like trash and
in an open field for somebody to come along and identify that it's even a body quickly well and i'm putting down what
you're picking up here captain so after the autopsy was done on our john doe he was buried in an unmarked grave in dry
ridge where he was say buried for the next 28 years now in 2017 there was a renewed push to identify him a sketch of
his face was done by a forensic artist now this is not the sketch that you're going to see when you come to
truecrimegarage.com because there's been advancements on the sketch the original sketch was prepared in 2009 and
this showed what his face was estimated to have looked like before it was decomposed now that black and white
image showed a man with a smile very straight white teeth prominent cheekbones and a crew cut it's a
distinctive face in that sketch but it's a drawing it's so it doesn't really look like anyone
real to me it was in 2016 that a computer-aided image the one that you will see when you go to
truecrimegarage.com was prepared and this was based on bone structure of our john doe so this is a
digitally enhanced image that looks much more like a black and white photograph right it shows a more menacing looking
man some have said with a very square jaw a broad face and broken nose notably reports accompanying the release
of this sketch included that the john doe had brown eyes like you pointed out there captain and that was the first to
my knowledge that they were indicating what they believed the eye color of this man was so obviously when they find a
man with no hands i mean that perks the ears up right [Music] what about more of this urban legend of
of him being him hanging from the barn yeah that was kind of the story in the beginning and
it seems like that story has survived a little bit over the decades that have passed that when his body was located he
was found hanging inside the barn which we pointed out at the top of the show is
just frankly not true and we know this based off of again kentucky state police they're holding a lot of information
close to the vest here and kudos to them because i think they're going to identify this guy
sooner rather than later so i don't blame them for doing so and they were very helpful when we reached
out to them they basically said look we can answer a couple questions but we can't
go into great detail on some of the things that we know they did confirm however that he was not
hanging in the barn they did confirm that the one report that we found that said he was
inside the barn found underneath a pile of barn type items right that that is in
fact true that and i don't know what these items were there's no description ever given i don't know if these are
seed sacks or hay bales or or or what have you or farming tools could be any number of things including
lots of nut sacs but they were able to confirm that for us so thank you to the kentucky state police now well hold on a
second because this individual was shot twice in the head yes so if he was hanging
to me you're trying to make a statement right but he he wasn't he simply wasn't right
he was which makes sense because you would not take that individual's you would not sever his hands if you're
trying to make a statement because you'd want people to know that you did this to this
individual to me that that would make the most sense if if this individual was shot and
then they went through the trouble to hang him from the rap rafters in a tobacco barn
it's to make a statement and so the fact that they try to cover up this individual to me it's again just another
step to cover up his identity and like you said that's probably going to lead them to
his killer his identity is probably going to lead him to somebody that is going to stick out
like a sore thumb it's even i mean the the placement of the body makes zero sense to me
not that see it doesn't doesn't make zero sense to me not that it shouldn't not that it should make any sense to me
but the thing is like why place him in the barn if you do why go to the extra effort of
piling all these items on top of him it's not like whoever's go entering the barn isn't
just going to clear all those items and find him now as back to your original question well hold on the other thing
about the tobacco barn is there's a definite smell from tobacco so maybe maybe they thought if we put
him in this barn and we put some stuff over him look we all know buddies that have like big barns
and they know every item in that barn and where it was moved in the last time it was moved so i think maybe they
thought okay the tobacco smell will help cover up the decaying body we we put some stuff onto him to
conceal him and maybe it's months before he's found because i mean you did say his face was badly decomposed
so that makes me wonder what was he killed somewhere else and left somewhere else for a while and then they
moved the body or was the decomposition done with inside that tobacco barn that's a
great question and that's why at the top of the show i brought up the fact of we
don't know the last time that this c.w adams went into the barn that would be really interesting to know number one
and again it would be interesting to know people were probably scratching their heads going why does the colonel
care so much it would be interesting to know what items were piled on top of this john doe because again i would
think it would be it would just be even more obvious to the individual entering the barn that hey there's something
there these items have been moved where you could again we're kind of speculating and spinning
our tires here i just wonder if you could have delayed the discovery of john doe even further by just placing him in
a dark corner somewhere in this barn but as you pointed out so astutely there we
don't know it could be the fact that this guy was placed in there relatively quickly after
he was killed and just not discovered for weeks or months and that the decaying process
took place inside the barn but back to your your original question here captain is
where i think that the folklore the local legend of the man in the barn being found hanging
in the barn i think it came from the original coroner who referenced john doe as possibly being
hung because we have his comments that are to me reason to believe that the whole
myth of the uh right man hanging came from him so my best guess here again we don't have the autopsy to
confirm this it's not available anywhere but my best guess here is that there's a
chance that they may have found some kind of ligature mark or maybe even some kind of ligature still on john doe's
neck there the original corner earlier said quote they hung him which we know based
off of the information from the police is not true so you wonder then was there an attempt
to strangle this man before he was eventually shot yeah or he could have got into a altercation with the
individual he's choking the individual he's being choked by the murderer the guy pulls out
a gun puts two in his head and goes well his hands were around my throat i need to sever his hands
so they take the whatever dna off but back to like you said when would this farmer be in the barn last this is why i
think it's not a bad dumping part drying tobacco is kind of a curing process which can take between
three and eight weeks to properly prepare tobacco for use so if you know that and maybe you know
more about what tobacco looks like when it's freshly hung that you would know hey if i put this
individual here they might not come out and check on this tobacco for eight weeks
that gives you quite a bit of head start exactly i'm just of the belief and i'm i could
be very wrong here i think if this guy was local if our john doe was local even remotely local yeah i agree that they
would have they would have been able to connect him to some kind of missing person or
or otherwise we do have to point out some of the more recent movement on this case
and this comes back from uh 2007 when they decided to exhume the body of our john doe and what they did here
captain was they severed his arms above the elbows and then sent the detached limbs to
the fbi's laboratory this is to serve a two-fold purpose one there are hopes that the fbi
can determine what type of implement was used to cut off his hands by examining the limbs for
tool marks and so on the other is for the purpose of dna extraction the arms sent to the fbi would contain dna
rich material that will provide a genetic profile of this victim and once the dna profile of the
john doe is isolated from his arm tissue it's then entered into codis a database
of criminal offenders and missing persons that did not exist in 1989 when his body was located they might be able
to pull dna that's not his of off his limbs and so far they've done their best but to this date
no hits have been obtained now the uh next step in this case was for the state police to
arrange for john doe's dna profile to be provided to the dna doe project to commence the forensic genealogy
process so if we can't find a match directly to him in any of the databases using his
dna which we now have did not have in 1989 they're hoping that now well maybe we can
find a relative or a twin of this individual or a family tree of our john doe and find out
through contacting them and other scientific measures to figure out who this guy was again
i'm of the belief that once they identify our john doe it's going to lead you to probably a very short list
of suspects have you ever heard of the grateful dough the grateful dough pretty interesting story
the grateful dough the reason why he was called grateful dough was he was found wearing a
grateful dead t-shirt the man was killed in a car accident on june 26 1995 in greensville county
virginia now his body remained nameless until december 9th 2015 and eventually his mom came forward
because and and this is all stemmed from computer generated images of jason and so once they were able to put those
out on facebook his mother was able to come forward and say that was my son he actually went
missing he went missing because he went to follow the grateful dead and then was
killed in this car accident and then his body remained nameless like i said but it was all solved through social media
so as much as they're trying to do very good work on this case i think the best chance we have look i really believe
that the true crime community can get behind this case share his image share his image on facebook instagram
twitter tick tock let's get this guy identified let's send this guy home yes crowdsourcing can be a
powerful and important tool in these types of investigations and so can the science as well
and i'm glad to report to everyone that in june of 2021 the dna doe project posted in regard to
this very case that the they have funded the case they were fundraising to raise funds
to be able to do some of the work on this case their goal was three thousand dollars
major funding for this case was provided by patty sullivan and they were able to reach that goal so
a big thank you to patty sullivan and all of the other donors that contributed to the dna doe project for
not just the grant county john doe case but all of the others so what does this mean it means
that they have secured sufficient funding to pay for the forensic genealogy process
in the grant county john doe case so now while they run their investigation and their forensic genealogy process
we can crowdsource his image source his information which that stuff is still information
that's needed anyway even if you even if we're able to link him to a family tree
or figure out who this guy was we need to know as much about him as possible again i think it's going to lead to a
short list of suspects once he is in fact positively identified one thing i want to point out though captain when
we're talking about crowdsourcing and one thing that you hit on right from jump street here is again the
height of this individual is very important that separates him from a lot of other
potential unidentified individuals or even missing persons that there were reports filed
for so the vicap according to the fbi he's listed at six foot five inches tall just to give everybody a bit of
reference in the power of that little piece of information i went on to the charlie project's
website to look at known individuals that have been reported missing and with the simple search of typing in
john doe's height the return was zero that there were zero missing males according to the charlie project that
are listed at six foot five inches tall now if we take that down right let's say
that maybe he's listed at six foot four whoever reported him missing thinks that he's six foot
four inches tall there's 110 males that are missing that are six foot four inches tall some of them the majority of
them in fact the overwhelming majority of them have been reported missing after this guy's body was found in that barn
so it cannot be them well it could be them because somebody goes missing and you're reported missing afterwards and
then if you take that number and go up to six foot six inches tall there are just 14
males that are listed on the charlie projects website so again that's a powerful piece of information in this
case a powerful piece of information in this case will be what they believe he looked
like his likeness that we now have that computer image of and it's very detailed in my opinion the
captain's gonna put it on the website and you'll be able to check that out at truecrimegarage.com now the question is
could be why bother with this at all right there's a lot of work going on in this
30 year old case there are plenty of recent homicides that are unsolved why push this to
solve this one from 1989. now some members of law enforcement involved in this case have commented directly on
that per fox 19 news quote there's some family somewhere they're wondering where
their uncle their son their brother where they're at and they deserve to have that peace of mind this is a quote
from the kentucky state police and it goes on to say we are very hopeful that we are going to get a match
we don't have any family to contact it's really sad the family they never had that peace of mind there's someone
out there who's missing a son or an uncle or a dad and as you pointed out captain the kentucky state police share
and echo your words exactly they say he deserves to go back home his family deserves to know where he is he was
buried in a pauper's grave with no headstone yeah so it's a pretty simple call to action if you can share this
image with friends and family if you can share it on social media i think we might be able to make a
difference in this case and i want to take this just a step further right because of course it's not just for
humane or sentimental reasons that we want to identify the grant county john doe
we true crime garage want to identify him and remind everybody out there that this guy was murdered
someone murdered him and that murderer has gotten away with it for decades now that we have the ability to use
modern science to provide answers no matter how old the crime is it's a worthwhile undertaking to try to
bring closure to families and justice to the victims no matter how old their cases may be
well i think we both agree with him being such a large individual there's probably more than one individual
responsible so it's two or more bags of [ __ ] that need to be held responsible for this heinous crime so
please take a minute to go to our website true crime garage dot com look at this individual to see if you
can help if anybody out there listening has any information on this case or the identity of this individual at all
please contact the kentucky state police at 859 eight one two one two or fbi vicap at
eight hundred six three four four zero nine seven [Music] thank you guys so much for joining us
here in the garage if you'd like to have an evening with me the captain you can do so in champaign illinois on december
11th the show starts at 6 30 and we'll be doing a meet and greet afterwards at 8 o'clock it's at the blind pig company
and that's in champaign illinois get the tickets at captainfathans.com colonel do we have any recommended
reading this week this week we got a little recommended listening check out the beyond bizarre true crime podcast
this is a weekly podcast with a different guest host or host each week coming from the world of true
crime podcasts and the guests select the case and tell you about this truly bizarre case in their own style and
newsflash here the old captain and colonel well we hosted last week so make sure you check out the beyond bizarre
true crime podcast wherever you get your podcast and join us back here in the garage next week until then be good be
kind and don't let it [Applause] [Music] you

Man With No Hands /// Part 1 /// 534

Part 1 of 1

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

This week we offer some assistance in an ongoing murder investigation and we are asking for your help. On Sunday, April 9, 1989 a farmer discovered the body a male murder victim inside a barn in rural Grant County, Kentucky. The man was shot and killed and his hands were removed. Kentucky State Police need our help to identify this victim. The male victim is described as caucasian, 6 foot 4 or 5 inches tall and approximately 230lbs. He has brown hair and extensive dental work. Computer enhanced photos of this man and what he MAY have looked like are available on our website www.TrueCrimeGarage.com and the Garage’s twitter and instagram. Anyone with information should contact Kentucky State Police at 859-428-1212 or FBI VICAP at 800-634-4097.

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Brief Summary

The episode covers the unsolved murder of a man found in a Kentucky barn in 1989, focusing on new DNA technology to identify him.

Key points

The Case of the Man with No Hands. A 31-year-old murder case is receiving renewed attention as DNA technology advances.
Mystery of the Barn Discovery. Farmer C.W. Adams discovers a body in his barn, leading to a perplexing investigation.
Unraveling the Identity. Despite being 6'5" and having distinctive features, the man's identity remains a mystery.
The Mysterious John Doe. A man found dead in a barn raises questions about his identity and the circumstances of his death.
Unusual Circumstances of Death. The victim was shot execution style, raising suspicions about the motive behind the murder.
The Search for Answers. Investigators struggle to identify the victim and uncover the truth behind his death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He deserved to go back home.

Discussing the unidentified man's burial situation.

3:53WatchNov 11, 2021

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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