It’s been over a year since a human skull — and later a full skeleton — was discovered on Marcy Street in Akron, and investigators have exhausted all leads in determining the man’s identity.
What is known is the skeleton belonged to a white man, likely in his late 30s or early 40s. He probably stood at about 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2. He might have been homeless, a drug addict or both. He’s thought to have died in a 2012 fire at a vacant house that has since been demolished in the South Akron neighborhood.
His skeleton remained inside 1345 Marcy St. until his skull — charred black in places and topped with a tuft of blondish hair — appeared on the sidewalk on Jan. 8, 2016. Authorities don’t know who put it there, but it’s thought that someone was trying to alert the public that his skeleton was inside.
Mercyhurst University anthropologists followed clues and found the rest of his bones. They performed an analysis last year, which determined his race, age and height. After that, investigators entered DNA samples from the skeleton into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, a criminal justice program that collects DNA profiles from criminal offenders at the federal, state and local levels.
“There were no hits,” said Gary Guenther, chief investigator for the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said the man’s absence from the FBI’s database means he’d never been arrested on a felony charge — at least since the database was established in 1994.
“Anyone arrested on a felony charge gets put into CODIS,” Edwards said.
Police also have looked through missing persons reports for matches in description, but nothing panned out.
Edwards and Guenther said DNA was the last hope in uncovering the man’s identity.
“Right now, we’ve basically hit a roadblock,” Edwards said. “There aren’t any leads for us to follow.”
“As of right now,” Guenther said, “we’re kind of on hold.”
According to Akron fire records, the skeleton’s discovery prompted an internal investigation at the fire department.
The fire at the vacant house was reported at 10:24 a.m. on Nov. 24, 2012. It took just 24 minutes to get under control, but by that time part of the roof had collapsed. Investigators determined the fire was unintentional and started by materials used in smoking.
The man’s body is thought to have been covered by debris during the fire, according to reports. The fire started in a second-story room where his skeleton was later found. Part of the ceiling there had collapsed and smashed a hole into the floor at the doorway to the room — so no one could enter safely.
“The entire ceiling in the room had collapsed,” wrote District Chief Richard Vober, “and firefighters would have been unable to determine if a body was in the room.”
Firefighters completed primary and secondary searches for victims.
“Their search produced no evidence of a fire victim at that time,” Vober wrote.
The home remained vacant, though without its windows boarded, ever since the fire. It was owned at the time by Go Invest Wisely LLC, a now-defunct Utah-based company that bought up dilapidated homes across the country and tried to sell them as rent-to-own homes.
No one came or went from the home.
And so the man’s body went undiscovered for more than three years.
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ and on Facebook @JournoNickGlunt .