A body found just more than three decades ago in the Mississippi River south of Festus has been identified. Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak announced today, July 22, the man pulled from the river was Benny Lee Olson of Illinois.<\/p>\n
Olson\u2019s body was pulled from the river in September 1994 near Rush Island. Olson was buried in 1995 at the Bellefontaine Neighbors\u2019 Friedens Cemetery in north St. Louis County after no family members claimed the body.<\/p>\n
Sheriff\u2019s Office Lt. Col. Tim Whitney, the undersheriff, said Olson was 45 years old when his body was discovered, and he had lived in the Edwardsville, Ill., area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge was he was never reported missing by anyone,\u201d Whitney said. \u201cHis sister was the last person who we know had seen him, and she had seen him about a year before his body was found.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitney said the Sheriff\u2019s Office paid $1,700 to exhume the body on Sept. 11, 2024. He said Heartland Genetic Genealogy covered the cost for the lab work, but he did not know how much was spent to identify Olson.<\/p>\n
Det. Lee Morris and analyst Heather Missey worked with Regional Medical Examiner\u2019s Office Division Director Kathleen Diebold Hargrave, Forensic Genetic Genealogist Alyssa Feller of Heartland Genetic Genealogy, Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Lindsay Trammell of the St. Louis County Office of the Medical Examiner and Capt. Jerry Endicott, the Madison County Sheriff\u2019s Office jail administrator, to identify the body.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt speaks to the tenacious attitude that our detectives have towards solving cases that aren\u2019t just new but old as well\u201d Whitney said. \u201cI had a conversation with longtime Det. Lee Morris, who is one of the people who worked really hard on this case, and he had shared it was a career goal of his to bring this case full circle, provide this family closure and how deeply satisfied he was to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time we can provide a family with closure, as we did in this case, is incredibly rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s medical and genetics experts worked to extract and sequence Olson\u2019s DNA. The law enforcement team members then scoured databases and records to match the profile to a person, according to a statement from the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply grateful to all the dedicated professionals whose collaboration and persistence made this identification possible,\u201d Hargrave said. \u201cThis case highlights the remarkable impact of teamwork across forensic science, law enforcement, and genetic genealogy in bringing long-awaited answers to restore his identity and bring closure for his loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitney said there are no other bodies that the Sheriff\u2019s Office is trying to identify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A body found just more than three decades ago in the Mississippi River south of Festus has been…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":84194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[57084,18531,1761,150,4637,18820,57089,27544,5564,57086,57088,20830,815,27610,39046,27531,20883,27778,57090,57092,57085,159,57091,57087,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-84193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-benny-lee-olson","9":"tag-bioinformatics","10":"tag-biology","11":"tag-biotechnology","12":"tag-body","13":"tag-body-found","14":"tag-branches-of-genetics","15":"tag-branches-of-science","16":"tag-dna","17":"tag-forensic-science","18":"tag-genealogy","19":"tag-genetic-genealogy","20":"tag-genetics","21":"tag-kinship-and-descent","22":"tag-law-enforcement-techniques","23":"tag-life-sciences","24":"tag-mississippi-river","25":"tag-molecular-biology","26":"tag-nucleic-acids","27":"tag-phylogenetics","28":"tag-rush-island","29":"tag-science","30":"tag-science-and-law","31":"tag-unidentified","32":"tag-united-states","33":"tag-unitedstates","34":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114898993413356038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}