This is such incredible news to wake up to

Earlier this year, members from websleuths.com set out to solve a 20 year old cold case concerning an unidentified male who died in a car crash. They called him Jason Doe/Grateful Doe because he wore a Grateful Dead t-shirt and had tickets from a Grateful Dead show in his pockets. The driver of the vehicle was identified immediately, but they couldn't identify Jason Doe - the driver had picked him up and his identity was unknown.

These members posted on reddit and on imgur about the case, and a person contacted them after seeing their imgur submission. He had a roommate of sorts back in 94-95 who looked like the reconstruction pictures of what Jason looked like, and he was also called Jason. After a lot of back and forth talking between the members, the roommate, and other people who knew this Jason, they realized that a lot of things added up.

Pictures of this Jason were available, and the resemblance was uncanny. However, they didn't have a last name so they couldn't proceed with the sleuthing, and so the story reached mainstream media. A woman contacted the police and claimed the person in the pictures was her song Jason Callahan. Turns out he had been missing since 1995. She submitted DNA, and after almost a year, the results confirmed what everyone suspected: Jason Callahan was Jason Doe/Grateful Doe.


http://imgur.com/gallery/Pc8Rt7N/new
http://wtvr.com/2015/12/09/jason-cal...-grateful-doe/

A message from his sister on the Facebook page for this case:


This is so sad yet such a great proof of the power of internet and what happens when great people come together. So many unidentified people and cold cases could be solved if the right person sees it. Earlier this year websleuths.com also helped identify a Doe from 1978 - it's amazing how useful internet can be.

Can someone dumb it down for me please. Its late here am I not at 100% brain power atm.


Did he fake his death or did the body get switched? Or could they not identify him? I keep rereading it and getting confused.

He couldn't be identified. He didn't have identification with him, and I'm not sure how advanced DNA was back then, but they wouldn't have found his DNA stored anyway.

That's really sad.

Same here

Wow the power, like when 4chan alerted the police to those girls who were burning an endangered turtle alive

Ahh kk that what I thought. Thank good for reddit never thought I would say that.

thats really sad but im glad they were able to identify him

If a body is found without an ID, the only way to confirm the identity is either through medical records (like say an implant with a serial number) or DNA. If there are no medical records to be accessed (no implant with a serial number) and/or if the person's DNA is not in the government's DNA database, there's no way to identify the body.

Jason's mother thought he had gone missing, not that he had died, and since the police could not identify the body, no one was able to inform the woman of her son's death.

It wasn't until computer-generated photos of what the boy may have looked like found their way onto the web that someone thought he looked familiar. Dots were connected and Jason's mother was finally able to supply some DNA for testing of the body. The DNA came back positive and the identity of the body was confirmed.

So the mother and sister hasnt heard from him in 20 years and assumed he was alive?

No Grateful Dead fan goes that long without asking family for money. My uncle Scott is a dead head and he hits up my dad for money at least 3 times a year.

This

If I'm not mistaken, someone from his family tried to file a missing person report on him but for some reason it didn't lead anywhere (can't recall if it collected dust in a sheriff's office somewhere or if it never went through).

Lmao more like ATRL when you need them