Body found on the BW Parkway decades ago finally identified with the help of volunteers
A man whose body was found along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway 45 years ago has finally been identified, with help from a group of volunteer genealogists.
Earlier this month, U.S. Park Police and the DNA Doe Project identified 24-year-old Eddie Devone as the man found along the northbound lanes of the highway near the interchange with the Capitol Beltway back in 1981.
“They checked local hospitals, any missing persons reports, took fingerprints, did all their investigatory work. And at the time, it just came up with no leads,” said Lt. Daniel Bahamonde, acting commander of U.S. Park Police’s criminal investigations.
When Devone’s body was found, the cause of death was never determined, though there was no sign of any foul play. After years of dead ends on everything else, U.S. Park Police turned to the DNA Doe Project, which is based in California.
But it was Matthew Waterfield, who lives in London, England, who became the team lead and took up the cause.
“We are a nonprofit, so all of the research we provide is completely pro bono,” Waterfield said. “The benefit of that is that even if a case is particularly tricky and may take dozens or hundreds or even thousands of hours to resolve, we can put in that time because all of the people working on that case are volunteers.”
In this case, it took hundreds of hours to identify Devone, whose DNA was uploaded into databases that took genealogists to North Carolina — far away from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
“It was complicated, because we were looking at this couple from North Carolina, and we knew, based on our research, based on the amount of DNA that our John Doe shared with other members of their family, that this couple probably had a child who was the grandparent of our Doe,” Waterfield said.
“We looked into their children, their grandchildren, great grandchildren, couldn’t find anything, and we couldn’t find any link to Baltimore or D.C., which we had kind of been expecting, considering where this gentleman had been found,” he added.
U.S. Park Police went to North Carolina and spoke to relatives who turned up in the family tree that was created. What they learned eventually brought them back to the D.C. region.
“It was indeed discovered that that couple had had another daughter, a daughter who was given up for adoption 100 years ago,” Waterfield said. “That daughter had stayed in contact with certain members of her biological family, and they could tell investigators that they knew she had moved to Baltimore. So at that point, that was really the breakthrough.”
From there, detectives were eventually able to track down Devone’s sister. In an era with no social media and no easy way to contact someone who wanted to be left alone, he had become estranged from his family.
“That’s pretty much why there was no missing person (report),” Bahamonde said. “It was good closure for them, but to be honest, they weren’t even aware that they were missing.”
This isn’t the first time the DNA Doe Project has helped identify someone in this region. In 2022, the group helped identify a man found dead inside a home on Naylor Road SE as 59-year-old Darryl Williamson.
Waterfield said the Doe Project is hoping to help solve more cases like this one in the future.
“It’s something that we are able to do in our spare time, and which people willingly give their spare time to, because it’s such a frankly rewarding thing,” he said. “A disproportionately large number of our volunteers are people who took a DNA test and found a surprise in their family tree, or took a DNA test to address a mystery in their family tree — maybe they were adopted or maybe they had a grandparent they never knew about.”
Waterfield added that many of the volunteers who dedicated their time to the project aren’t necessarily professional genealogists.
“They are passionate people who had a career and started getting into genetic genealogy on the side, and then became so good at genetic genealogical analysis, that they decided to apply to join us and lend their skills in a different way,” he said.
But the time spent volunteering as genealogists is only possible after the costly process of generating a DNA profile inside a laboratory is complete. That’s why the group also solicits donations, and helps those looking to identify someone apply for grants and other ways to pay for the cost of lab work.