Geneaology, DNA help state police identify homicide victim found 34 years ago

More than 34 years ago, hunters in a wooded area in Daviess County found the body of a man who had been shot multiple times, beaten and had his hands and feet cut off.

For decades, Kentucky State Police said, attempts to identify the homicide victim were unsuccessful. At one point, an incorrect identification was made, according to previous media reports.

But Friday night, state police announced that they finally know the man’s name.

The man, William Dennis Mathews, of Louisville, was identified through genealogy testing with the help of the Trans Doe Task Force, state police said in a news release.

Mathews would have been 37 years old when his body was found on Jan. 7, 1990.

The Daviess County Sheriff’s Office had previously published photos and renderings of the man, whose body was found about “40 feet into the wood line off Pleasant Valley Road” near South Hampton Road in the Philpot community, according to the sheriff’s office’s website.

Lee Bingham Redgrave and Anthony Redgrave, who run the Massachusetts-based Trans Doe Task Force, said in an interview Friday night that they became involved in the case at the request of the medical examiner’s office.

Their organization is focused on finding and researching “cases of LGBTQ+ missing and murdered persons, especially focusing on unidentified individuals who may have been transgender,” according to its website. The Redgraves said they’ve helped solve upwards of 40 cases.

In this case, the researchers said they do not have any indication that the victim was a member of the LGBTQ community.

“While the Trans Doe Task Force aims to work on LGBTQ+ cases, when a victim is a Doe and we do not know their identity or how they identified, we can only rely on clues that a case might fall under our umbrella of services,” the Trans Doe Task Force said in a statement in which they offered condolences to Mathews’ loved ones. “Not every Doe we identify will turn out to be LGBTQ+ (please see the case of Bill Lewis). Regardless, we are very happy to have been able to provide information to assist with the identification of a person whose name was unknown for far too long.”

Anthony Redgrave said the Trans Doe Task Force has a general policy of taking all cases in which help is requested, because even if there’s a question of whether the person might have been part of the LGBTQ community, they want to help, and because historically, biases sometimes meant those cases were deprioritized.

“It’s just a fact that old cases need a second look,” Lee Bingham Redgrave said.

Even before the medical examiner reached out, the Redgraves said the Daviess County case had been on their radar because of the mutilation of the body, which they said could have been an “extreme” attempt to conceal the victim’s identity.

“That’s frequently a red flag that it might have been a hate crime,” Lee Bingham Redgrave said.

The researchers said they do not have any information about why the victim’s hands and feet might have been removed in this instance.

The positive identification in the case began with “good DNA, stored well,” Lee Bingham Redgrave said. “We were able to get some good data out of it.”

A bioinformatician — someone who combines the disciplines of computer science and genetics — filtered the data from the DNA sample into a format that could be used with the GEDmatch.com database, where people can upload their genetic testing data.

In order for the information to be used in cases like this one, users must give permission for their data to be shared with law enforcement, the researchers said.

“This is how people’s privacy is maintained,” Lee Bingham Redgrave said. “Everyone sharing data does so willingly.”

From there, the genealogical researchers try to construct the family trees of the closest matches to the victim, looking for common ancestors and descendants.

“Maybe someone doesn’t have a death date,” Lee Bingham Redgrave said. If they find a potential match, the researchers go about trying to find “proof of life.”

Once they provide law enforcement with a potential identification, they said it’s up to law enforcement to confirm it and take the investigation from there.

Anthony Redgrave said people interested in helping with their cause should upload their data to the GEDmatch.com website.

“Make your tree public,” he said.

State police asked that anyone with information about this case call KSP Post 16 at 270-826-3312.