Published March 11, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record

Nine months later, John Doe still has no name

For a homeless man who was found dead in the woods in June, there is no grave.

His remains are in a box placed in the Medical Examiner’s Office.

There have been no grieving family members, no flowers, no wakes. Nothing.

Even if there were a grave and a proper burial, the tombstone would be blank, and the clergyman wouldn’t know whose soul he was blessing.

After more than eight months since a fellow transient came upon the man’s skeleton, investigators still haven’t come up with a name.

The man’s lonesome death is a sobering symbol of just how vulnerable — emotionally and physically — homeless people are.

“We’ve done everything we can possibly think of to identify him,” Kevin Roberts, a St. Johns County sheriff’s detective, said recently.

Detectives interviewed members of the homeless community, an autopsy was conducted, and the man’s bones were sent to the University of Florida for an anthropologist to study.

Transients gave a few names of people who might be missing, the autopsy revealed the man’s death was natural, and the anthropologist narrowed it down to a Hispanic male between the ages of 25 and 35. None of the names panned out, and no one with a similar description has been reported missing.

Usually homeless people carry some form of identification or their fingerprints are in some sort of database, and thus they can usually be identified in a matter of weeks or even days. But to be eight months along and out of options is as distressing as it is perplexing.

“We can’t give them a proper burial; we can’t notify the family,” Roberts said. “We can’t tell them now because we don’t know ourselves.”

‘Scattered about’
In the muggy afternoon of June 24, David Worley was walking along a pathway through a patch of woods east of The St. Augustine Record building on State Road 312. Worley, now 51, was looking for aluminum cans to cash in when an odor struck him. He looked down, saw a smattering of bones and went to get a police officer.

The body was about 50 yards into the woods, just off the pathway that leads to a transient camp. A pair of gray tennis shoes and a Wal-Mart bag containing Bic razor blades and toothpaste were nearby.

The body had been there for several weeks and had become so badly decomposed in the Florida summer that detectives couldn’t tell the sex of the deceased. Maggots were crawling through a hand.

“There were large black feathers from a bird scattered around the remains as if a bird had been feeding on the remains,” a deputy wrote in a police report. “It appeared a large animal also fed on the remains, as they were not intact and were scattered about.”

During the autopsy, the medical examiner found a pin in the man’s left hip. The UF anthropologist examined it and found that it didn’t have a serial number, meaning it was likely inserted before the early 1990s, when prosthetics were first required to carry serial numbers.

Everyday struggle
Renee’ Morris, the executive director of the St. Francis House in Lincolnville, said she has thought about the John Doe every day since he was found in the woods.

Morris said it is difficult to cope with the thought that the organization could have helped him.

She knows “little, tiny St. Francis House cannot solve the homeless problem” and cannot save every homeless person who comes through St. Johns County. Still, John Doe’s death is a reminder to her that, for the county’s homeless, there are a lot of vital programs and services that they can’t access.

For starters, she said, a detoxification clinic would help get them sober.

“That’s a big beginning for a lot of people,” she said.

Morris, who has been planning to build a bigger, one-stop center to service the homeless population, said there is also a need for more housing and more general medical care.

“That’s what we’re moving toward,” she said, “so that man doesn’t have to die in the woods by himself.”

Some detractors have said the center could serve as a magnet, bringing more homeless to the county.

“People say, ‘Build it and they will come,’” she said. “Well, honey, they’re already here.”

The 2008 homelessness study from the Florida Department of Children and Families estimated there were 1,238 homeless people in St. Johns County, roughly half of the homeless population in Duval County.

In the meantime, Morris said, “You wonder who’s going to be next.”

‘Nobody to miss ‘em’
The man’s clothes were gathered up along with his bones and were submitted as evidence.

The medical examiner cataloged what he had on: Puritan brand shorts, possibly gray or tan, size small; red plaid boxer shorts, size medium; and a T-shirt, size unknown, with “COLLEGE” across the chest, similar to the sweater John Belushi wore in the 1978 film “Animal House.”

Like the man’s bones at the Medical Examiner’s Office, the clothes are undisturbed in an evidence room at the Sheriff’s Office.

Roberts and his fellow detectives have changed the man’s case to “inactive.” He said there’s little else they can do but wait and hope someone will realize the man is missing and set out to find him. Until then, it’s almost like he never existed.

“It’s a tough life, for a lack of better way of putting it — then ultimately to pass and nobody to miss ‘em.”

A version of this article was printed March 11, 2009, on Page 1A of The St. Augustine Record.