Roy Rogers was fishing in Keene Creek Reservoir near Ashland, Oregon on the night of July 11, 1963, when he found something wrapped in blankets, bound with wire and weighed down to keep it hidden, according to officials.
It was the body of a 2-year-old boy whose identity has remained unknown until now, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release posted on Facebook.
A DNA match recently revealed the toddler was Stevie Crawford, who was born Oct. 2, 1960, in New Mexico.
After the case went cold in August 1963, the files were archived for the next 45 years until Jackson County Sheriff’s Office detective Sgt. Colin Fagan discovered 11 boxes labeled “old Sheriff cases” in 2007, according to authorities.
Fagan asked Jim Tattersall, special investigator, to go through the boxes and Tattersall found the case.
Officials said Stevie’s body was exhumed from Hillcrest Memorial Park cemetery in August 2008 to take a DNA sample but the case went cold when there were no matches in the Combined DNA Index system. A composite image of the toddler was then created using the DNA by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2010, according to the news release.
The sheriff’s office said it received a tip through Facebook and deputy Medical Examiner detective Christian Adams continued the investigation. Adams worked with Oregon State Police and submitted a DNA sample of the boy to Parabon NanoLabs to find potential leads, according to officials.
Parabon NanoLabs searched GEDMatch, an open-source DNA repository, and discovered Stevie’s “two potential siblings,” authorities said. The half-brother of Stevie said in an interview with investigators that he had a younger sibling with Down syndrome, who was born in New Mexico and went missing. Investigators found a birth certificate and confirmed Stevie as the boy who was found dead by the fisherman