Local man’s remains returned to family after nearly 60 years

When the incomplete skeletal remains of a human body were found on the side of the John Day River in 1989, it seemed unlikely that there would ever be able to be a positive identification. At the time, the Sherman County Sheriff’s office suspected it to be David West Jr., a man who had gone missing during a flooding incident in 1964, but the technology to prove his identity didn’t yet exist.

“Back then we didn’t have the tools to do that, the DNA and all that kind of stuff,” Former Sheriff Gerald Lohrey said. “But the pathologists back then too, they were still pretty smart. They didn’t have the tools to work with, but I remember one said, ‘Well, this guy was a cowboy.’ And I said, ‘How can you tell?’ He said ‘Well, usually they’ve got bow legs, just like everybody says.’ They could determine age and all kinds of things. So without the modern tools, I think they did pretty good.”

Lohrey was the Sherman County Sheriff at the time of the discovery, and he and his team were the ones to recover the body. According to a press release from the Sherman County Sheriff’s Office, they consulted West’s dentist to see if his dental records matched up, but they weren’t able to make a conclusive identification.

Now, more than 30 years later, it’s Sheriff Lohrey that finally puts the case to rest. Not Gerald, but his son, Brad.

It wasn’t something he had set out to do, rather it was an opportunity that had shown up. In 2019, the State Medical Examiner’s Office obtained a federal grant to use innovative DNA technology on some of the oldest unidentified skeletal remains they had. They contacted Brad Lohrey, the current Sherman County Sheriff, to see if he would be interested in the examiner’s office using the technology on the remains.

“I said ‘Yes, do it. Figure out who it is,’” Brad Lohrey said. “But it was truly my dad that started the investigation and the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office that actually did the heavy lifting. I just assisted and the Gilliam County Sheriff assisted in helping identify the family … I have to give kudos to the Oregon State Medical folks because they are truly the ones that just never gave up.”

According to Vance, state forensic anthropologist and human identification program coordinator for the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, it’s their policy at the office to always keep remains for potential identification. Even if the technology doesn’t yet exist, with the rate that things are changing, it might in the not-so-distant future.

That was the case with West’s remains as well. When his remains were recovered, there was no way to truly confirm it was, in fact, David West Jr., but hope remained that there would be a way someday. Because of this, the remains were retained by the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

“I knew about this case, because I’ve audited and inventoried our skeletal remains cases for the last 20 years,” Vance said. “And this Sherman County case, well, there it is. It’s in a box and it’s labeled lovingly and we’ve taken good care of it. I just always wondered who it was, like, ‘Are we ever going to solve that case?’ And so when we did get that federal money I knew this was one of the cases that I wanted to focus on.”

The grant was specifically for an innovative DNA technique called investigative genetic genealogy. This technique, at its core, has two main parts: Genetics and genealogy. Genetics refers to DNA relations, the connections shown between two people by how much DNA they share, whereas genealogy looks at family trees that people make. This may include adoptive family or situations in which someone is incorrectly assumed to be genetically related.

With skeletons, the technology to extract DNA from bone is relatively new. Being able to do so gave medical offices the chance to add DNA from bone samples to a national database: the Combined DNA Index System, also known as CODIS. CODIS is a national DNA database created and maintained by the FBI.

“When you (upload samples), what you’re expecting is to hit or associate to another case, a missing person’s profile, a convicted offender sample,” Vance said. “It could even hit to forensic evidence. So this DNA profile from this particular individual just churned around in the database for years and years and years and didn’t hit on anything.”

When the grant allowed them to direct special attention to the case, Vance said there wasn’t much for a starting point except for a handwritten note in the old paper file.

“It said ‘Possible West, David. Dental records pending,’” Vance said of the note. “I had no ability to follow up on that. Because believe me, if we could have just identified him without doing all the genealogy work we would have, but there was nothing in the paper file that said that their identity had ever been confirmed. In this day and age in the 21st century there’s national standards on what I have to do to provide an identification confirmation, especially to a family who has been wondering for decades where their loved one is.”

It was a starting point, however. And though West’s DNA had never hit on anything in the system, there was still the genealogical route. Through cross reference, they were able to find that in the family tree, it said he had a brother who was still alive.

“Law enforcement had to approach the brother, who was quite old at this point, I would imagine, and basically tell him the story and said, ‘We need to confirm that the skeleton that was found in Sherman County in 1989 is your brother Dave,’ and he’s like, ‘Okay,’ so they swabbed his mouth,” Vance said. “We did DNA on his swab and he shared the correct amount of DNA with the skeleton that you would share with a brother.”

To be able to match West’s DNA, extracted from only bone, to that of his brother is something that wouldn’t have been possible years prior, which is a testament to the advancement of this kind of technology, and technology in general.

Gerald Lohrey said he’s often blown away by how much technology in policing has changed since he retired nearly 30 years ago.

“I go over there to visit my son at the courthouse once in a while, I want to see what’s going on,” he said. “And the technology, the deputies showed me some of the stuff that’s there, what they do. Well, if I were to start now, I couldn’t qualify to be a deputy. It’s so far over my head!”

Even Brad Lohrey, who has been sheriff for 22 years, said he can’t believe how far DNA in particular has come since the time that he started out in law enforcement.

“When I first started my career, DNA was just becoming a thing,” he said. “For us, it was like this futuristic tool that I had no idea that it was going to do what it does today. I mean, today it’s probably one of the biggest tools to solve crimes, especially homicides and missing persons. And the science of DNA is changing, it’s changing daily. What the future is going to bring for us with DNA technology I can only imagine.”

This sentiment is shared by Vance. Even as someone with extensive knowledge of the field, she knows that the technology is constantly changing and evolving, which goes back to the boxes in her room, even ones that have been there just as long as David West was.

“We have some samples that were too degraded to provide a DNA profile,” Vance said. “They’ve just been sitting too long. Bacteria has really done a number on the cellular material in the bone so the DNA material is contaminated, if you will, and that profile can’t be uploaded. But who knows? In five years, there might be a DNA lab who has solved that challenge ... And so we still hold out hope. We don’t cremate them, we don’t get rid of them, there’s none of that, because there’s going to be some sort of technology in the future that I might be able to use to resolve that case that I don’t know about today.”

In the end, Vance said, finding the identity of the people in the boxes is about more than just solving a case. It’s about giving those people their personhood back, the respect of knowing who they were, not just seeing them as a pile of bones.

“A first and last name is dignity,” Vance said. “It provides a certain amount of dignity to these people, and if I can do that, then I’ve done my job and that’s really all I can ask.”