Man Missing 43 Years Is Identified Thanks To Bergen County Students

MAHWAH, NJ — While it was reported this week that college students in a geneaology program at Ramapo College linked a jawbone found by a boy in 2002 to a long-dead marine — that wasn't the only mystery that students in the program solved in recent months.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the students at the Mahwah-based college had helped conclusively identify a body found in Pine Lake, Wisconsin in 1980 as a man who had disappeared two months earlier.

The man's brother had been looking for him for more than 40 years.

Back on March 19, 1980, the Oneida County, Wisconsin Medical Examiner’s Office, along with the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office, responded to a call about a body found in the snow in a field in Pine Lake, approximately 46 yards from Highway 17. No identification was found.

A forensic autopsy performed at the University of Wisconsin determined that the "John Doe" had died from cold exposure due to hypothermia. Fingerprints were sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory and Federal Bureau of Investigation, but they were not identified.

In 2019, John Doe's information was entered into NamUs. Multiple potential matches were all confirmed to be negative.

In April 2021, the Oneida County Medical Examiner’s Office exhumed the body of "John Doe 1980." The body was taken to the Fond du Lac Medical Examiner’s Office to be processed for DNA collection. The collected items were sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico for DNA profiling.

In January 2023, the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center was enlisted by the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office in Rhinelander, Wisc. to assist with identifying “Rhinelander John Doe.”

In February 2023, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office sent a portion of John Doe’s lower jaw to Intermountain Forensics. Scientists performed DNA extraction, whole genome sequencing, and bioinformatics.

Later in 2023, students in the Ramapo College IGG Certificate Program investigated genetic matches of “Rhinelander John Doe," and by December, they had identified Norman Grasser of Chicago.

Grasser's brother had been searching for him for decades. He had even created a FindAGrave page using the date of Grasser’s death as the day he was reported missing, Jan. 20, 1980, in Chicago.

This year, the site was updated to note that now that Grasser has been identified, his body was re-buried with his mother.

The IGG Center, the first of its kind in the nation, opened in December of 2022 and "trains students to become proficient and ethical practitioners using IGG to resolve cases involving violent crime, unidentified human remains, and wrongful convictions," the university said in a release.

IGG combines traditional genealogy and genetic genealogy to provide investigative leads in cases involving violent crime and unidentified human remains.

IGG can also be used to help exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

More than 40 cases from across the United States have been accepted since the center opened, they said.

For more information about Ramapo College and the IGG Center, visit ramapo.edu/igg.