Stevie CrawfordThe small frame of was discovered lifeless on July 11, 1963. His hay-colored hair and the way he was fully dressed – wrapped in a weighted blanket – raised alarm bells for Oregon investigators who have long considered his case as the longest unsolved mystery and cold case as-is. No one knew his name until the start of the week.
Found by a fisherman in the Keen County Reservoir, the iron weights placed inside the quilted quilt were a clear signal that someone was hoping the body would never be found. That was, although the dead and decomposed corpse had baffled law enforcement for nearly 60 years.
Oregon State Police described the boy when he was discovered:
The child’s body was dressed in high-quality clothes, which consisted of a red long-sleeved shirt, gray corduroy pants, a cloth diaper with blue diaper pins, socks and socks. white shoes brand “Jumping Jack”. He was also wrapped in a blue colored blanket and a handmade patchwork quilt with red gingham squares.
More than 23 members of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office worked on the case with help from Oregon State Police and the FBI. The matter eventually turned cold and the files were archived. In 2007, the “Keene Creek Toddler Case” was reopened by Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan and special investigator Jim tattersal. The body was exhumed the following year and a DNA sample was collected, but it will be years before real progress is made in identifying Crawford.
A composite image was created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2009 in the hope that it might generate leads. This effort was unsuccessful. Neither did the work of the University of North Texas Human Identification Center, which extracted a DNA profile and tested it against a national database.
A breakdown in the case came in 2018 when the Oregon State Police Medical Examiner’s Office received a federal grant to conduct “innovative DNA techniques on unresolved unidentified skeletal remains cases.” . In collaboration with supplier Parabon Nanolabs, several investigators worked with scientists and, in October 2020, “a DNA profile suitable for comparison with genealogical databases was successfully extracted,” according to state police. Oregon.
“The first Parabon Nanolabs report to be completed was a DNA phenotyping report, where genetic material was used to determine the color of the deceased’s eyes, hair, skin and ancestry,” said the ‘agency in a press release Wednesday. “The report predicted that this child was of Northern European descent, with very fair skin, brown eyes and brown to light blond hair.”
Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore then plugged those results into the open source DNA database GEDmatch and discovered several parents of the unidentified boy. These relatives led the police to one of the boy’s immediate family members, his half-brother.
The press release recounts this turn of events:
An interview with a possible parent revealed that as a child he had a younger brother named “Stevie” with a disability who was born in New Mexico, who lived in Oregon in the early 1960s but mysteriously disappeared from the family without explanation. . One difficult factor for detectives following the lead was that New Mexico vital records (such as birth and death notices) are not available to the public. The records of all children named “Stevie” or “Steven” born in the late 1960s or early 1961 to the mother, identified by genetic genealogy, were requested. The New Mexico Department of Archives has discovered a birth certificate for “Steven Alexander Crawford,” born October 2, 1960, from the listed mother (not named here for confidentiality reasons) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It was proof that a 2 year old named Stevie existed. After 58 years, Keene Creek Doe’s baby had a possible name: Steven “Stevie” Crawford.
“This disabled little boy was loved and missed by his siblings, and deserved to have a name and an identity. Stevie’s case was very emotional for all investigators involved, ”Moore told ABC News. “Once the genetic genealogy research led to his family, it was a great comfort that his surviving family were so loving and willing to help. “
Police say they do not expect to lay charges.
[image via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children]
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