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20-year-old ‘cold case’ may be solved
OURAY — In a story that could be a script for the TV show “Cold Case,” the body of a man found more than 20 years ago in Ouray County may finally be close to being identified, said Ouray County Sheriff Dominic “Junior” Mattivi.
The body, identified only as John Doe, has been stored in the morgue of Montrose Memorial Hospital all this time, but neither Mattivi or Ouray County coroner Gary Miller knew of its existence until notified by the hospital a couple of months ago. Miller has been coroner for 18 years and Mattivi has been with the sheriff’s department since 1992.
After getting a call from the hospital around Christmas, Miller went to the Ouray commissioners on Monday to ask for funds to bury the man. He couldn’t approach them before then, he said, because first he had to retrieve the old file on the case, which wasn’t accessible until last week because of renovations at the county courthouse.
A “break” in the case occurred when a man in Colona called Mattivi after noticing an obituary in Thursday’s edition of The Daily Sentinel. The obituary of Billy Russell McFadden of Grand Junction who died Feb. 9, mentioned that he had a son, Russell Anthony McFadden, who disappeared 20 years ago.
Mattivi contacted Michael McFadden of Grand Junction, Russell McFadden’s brother, who agreed to supply DNA to see if there is a match with that of John Doe.
“He was positive and very hopeful,” Mattivi said. “They’d like closure also, and after 20 years they deserve it. When we called him and told him he was very excited.”
There may be good reason for the McFadden family to hope, he said.
Russell McFadden was reported missing in July of 1987. The body of John Doe was found in November of the same year, but it had apparently been there for quite some time, Mattivi said.
“We got information we could as far as the age of his brother that went missing and it’s close to what we estimate for the body, between 40 and 50 years old,” he said.
The body was found on the Golden Crystal mining claim, said Miller, about a half-mile south of Ouray. The man had apparently been camping out, he said.
“All they could tell was that he was a middle-aged Caucasian and he’d been out in the open,” Miller said. “There was no identification in the camp or on his body, and they did what they were supposed to do, took it to the morgue. I guess they were thinking some additional evidence would come in over a period of time.”
Read more in Friday’s edition of The Daily Sentinel.
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