The Salem City Council Monday night was agreeable to a project to try and identify the unknown victim of the 1971 Tonti Train Wreck. However, they want the costs of the project to be covered.
A Salem resident who is a journalism student at the University of Missouri has put together a plan to exhume the body from the East Lawn Cemetery and take DNA samples to match against Genealogical Data Bases that weren’t available in 1971. Henry Morton sees two reasons to try and solve the 53-year-old mystery.
“This person for sure still has some family out there, and I think they would probably like to have their loved one returned to them,” Morton said. “Then there’s also reason beyond just the moral reason, which is that it would be a really big story for Salem. Just take in comparison the story from Mt. Vernon when they figured out the Ina Jane Doe from 1991. That was huge. That was all over a bunch of major newspapers. I think there were even a few national ones.”
Morton now has to come up with the estimated $6,500 needed to pay for the expenses that are not being donated. The Salem Tourism Council has expressed interest, and Morton will be making an application for funding.
Morton outlined the steps he has taken for the exhumation and DNA Collection to take place. There do not appear to be any legal issues. City crews and Merz Vault will help exhume the body. Crouse Funeral Home has agreed to take custody of the remains. The DNA Doe Project, a charitable organization whose mission is to identify John and Jane Does, has agreed to take on the project. Executive Director Jennifer Randolph along with Anthropologist Amy Michaels will come to Salem to oversee the project at no expense. Once DNA Extraction is complete, the samples will be matched with genealogical databases in hopes of getting a match.
Right now, the gravestone in East Lawn Cemetery reads ‘unidentified victim, Tonti Train wreck, June 10, 1971. Then Deputy Coroner Gene Earl said at the time the identity was impossible to determine in any way, including age, sex, or race of the body, because it was badly mangled, nearly decapitated and stripped of most of its flesh. The unknown person was one of 11 killed when the train derailed.
