Unidentified male in MN used stolen identity

[laini]

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/975ummn.html

Okay guys, I have looked at this guy several times and it is a puzzler! I am really curious who he is/was and why he used someone elses identity at the end of his life. His page says he may be connected to an Arizona custody case.

[outofthedark]

The only way of possibly ID'ing him aside from DNA/Dentals is possibly the custody case. Given his estimate age, wouldn't he be a little young to be living in a nursing home? I'm curious as to what he died from...

[Bluecat]

Is this the same guy?

http://info.doc.state.mn.us/PublicViewer/Inmate.asp?OID=163447

I wonder why they did not uncover the false name back in 2002? If it is the same person, then I wonder if the child involved in that conviction was his daughter? She could be 15 years old (13 or under in 2002). I'm guessing she was too young to know anything specific.

As for why he'd be in a nursing home, he could have been recovering from surgery or in hospice care because of a terminal illness (cancer, AIDS, etc.). The closest nursing home to that town provides subacute and hospice care as well as care for the elderly.

[laini]

Is this the same guy?

http://info.doc.state.mn.us/PublicViewer/Inmate.asp?OID=163447

I wonder why they did not uncover the false name back in 2002? If it is the same person, then I wonder if the child involved in that conviction was his daughter? She could be 15 years old (13 or under in 2002). I'm guessing she was too young to know anything specific.

As for why he'd be in a nursing home, he could have been recovering from surgery or in hospice care because of a terminal illness (cancer, AIDS, etc.). The closest nursing home to that town provides subacute and hospice care as well as care for the elderly.


Well that is interesting! Same name. Looks a lot like him, and also looks like a different person in some ways. I also wondered why in a nursing home. When I worked in a nursing home we had some younger patients (30's and 40's)who had had a stroke and no family to care for them/couldn't care for themselves. Or possibly liver failure or some chronic disease where he couldn't live on his own.

I also noticed the offender wore glasses, and this John Doe wore no glasses in all three photos probably taken at diffferent times.

[lymom3]

I think the eyes look very similar especially in the far left hand picture on Doe. The nose looks very similar in the middle picture. Need somebody to photoshop out the hair...

[Bluecat]

I wonder if the pictures on Doe are pulled from his residence and are older? They have that look about them... Maybe they think if they post older pictures someone from his previous life will recognize him?

[Mr. E]

Why did I immediately think of Eric Douglas Nielsen? He's the guy that kidnapped his daughter Genevieve in 1976 when she was a baby. She was recently recovered, an adult who didn't even know she was missing. I thought Nielsen was or at least had been incarcerated. I tried to find a picture of him. Surely the Nielsen case is too famous a case for anything like this to happen.

[Bluecat]

Non-custodial parents take their kids and disappear all of the time. It is the most common type of kidnapping (over 80% of all kidnappings, to my understanding).

It's not that difficult to assume a new identity, you just need the Social Security info and birth certificate from my understanding. As long as you lived a quiet life and stayed away from being on TV, etc., you could get away with it. Especially if you have not been fingerprinted before.

Nielsen was in prison under as assumed name when a tip led the authorities to his true identity (he must have talked to someone about his former life at some point). If he had a prior criminal record, I can only imagine that it was out of state and his prints/DNA were not run in any kind of interstate or national search. I can imagine three reasons why - 1) a backlog which could run into months or years, 2) budget constraints, 3) his crime, while enough to gain prison time, was relatively minor.