Identified! AL - Bibb Co, WhtMal UP13483, 14-17, MVA/hitchhiker, tattoo: RY + LOVE Mar'61 - Daniel Armantrout

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https://identifyus.org/en/cases/13483
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20051211/NEWS/512110375

Unidentified hitchhiker -

Bibb County residents were shocked to hear reports about a 14-17 year old Caucasian male hitchhiker who died in a crash when the vehicle he was being escorted in collided with the bridge rail and plunged into the Cahaba River near River Bend. The young boy drowned.

On his person besides the clothes he was wearing, was a Timex wrist watch, a carrying bag with several shirts and pants, a brown plastic wallet without any identification, and a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes with a South Carolina tax stamp.

The boy was 5’6” 120 lbs, with blue eyes and light brown hair. The boy had a tattoo which bared the inscription RY + LOVE. The autopsy revealed that the unknown boy might have walked with a slight limp.
 
https://identifyus.org/en/cases/13483
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20051211/NEWS/512110375

Unidentified hitchhiker -

Bibb County residents were shocked to hear reports about a 14-17 year old Caucasian male hitchhiker who died in a crash when the vehicle he was being escorted in collided with the bridge rail and plunged into the Cahaba River near River Bend. The young boy drowned.

On his person besides the clothes he was wearing, was a Timex wrist watch, a carrying bag with several shirts and pants, a brown plastic wallet without any identification, and a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes with a South Carolina tax stamp.

The boy was 5’6” 120 lbs, with blue eyes and light brown hair. The boy had a tattoo which bared the inscription RY + LOVE. The autopsy revealed that the unknown boy might have walked with a slight limp.

This is a strange, sad one from pretty far in the past ...so little to go on. I wonder who was the driver/other occupants of the vehicle? Did the driver/others drown as well, or did someone survive? Just wondering how they felt so sure he was a hitchhiker -- did someone survive to say so, and if they did, were they able to remember anything he talked about, where he was picked up, etc. Brings up a lot of questions.

ETA: Whoops, had neglected to look at the second link before posting. Well, that does answer a few questions...but still, what a mystery.
 
I was able to locate an article that appeared in the Limestone Democrat (a newspaper from Athens, AL) on August22, 1961 about the unidentified hitchhiker that included a postmortem photo and some information that I hadn't seen in the more modern article or his NamUs page -- such as at the time of his death, it was believed that the youth had artificially lightened his hair and it was naturally darker in color.

Because of the photo, I am going to post a link, rather than upload it here -- http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q664/amberbluecat/limestdem_aug221961_namus13483_zps6vlayx2u.jpg

I also tried to clean up the photo and make it look a bit less like newsprint (I'm not 100% happy with my editing but it does give a better idea of how the young man looked) -- http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q664/amberbluecat/namusup13483pm_zps7v9ceuja.jpg

Maybe I am being overly suspicious, but I can't help but wonder if the bleached hair was an attempt to disguise himself. I don't think the "surfer" look had become popular by the beginning of 1961, although I could be wrong about this since I wasn't around at the time. The only vaguely remote possibility that I could find is a Robert Rasmussen who is mentioned as going missing at the same time as Gerald Montrio (NamUs MP # 14586, Robert doesn't have a NamUs page unless it is unpublished) from Plymouth, MA in 1957, yet by 1961 Robert might be too old (and I really have no idea about his appearance).
 
I had never heard of this boy until he was posted on the Help ID Me Facebook page today. A rather strange-looking composite was posted. I wasn't able to find him via Websleuths searches; if there is already a thread, please delete.

He should be an easy ID: he was small for a male, at 5'6, 120 lbs. He might have walked with a slight limp. He had a tattoo that read "RY + LOVE." He smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, bought in South Carolina. He carried bags with shirts and pants inside, and he had a brown plastic wallet with no ID. He told the guy with whom he hitched the ride (who survived the crash, obviously) that he had run away from home after his parent's separation.

He died in a crash when the car collided with a bridge rail, and sent him into the Cahaba River (near River Bend). He had drowned.

I hope this gets resolution of some kind. 55 years is a long time to be nameless.

https://identifyus.org/cases/13483
 
I had never heard of this boy until he was posted on the Help ID Me Facebook page today. A rather strange-looking composite was posted. I wasn't able to find him via Websleuths searches; if there is already a thread, please delete.

He should be an easy ID: he was small for a male, at 5'6, 120 lbs. He might have walked with a slight limp. He had a tattoo that read "RY + LOVE." He smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, bought in South Carolina. He carried bags with shirts and pants inside, and he had a brown plastic wallet with no ID. He told the guy with whom he hitched the ride (who survived the crash, obviously) that he had run away from home after his parent's separation.

He died in a crash when the car collided with a bridge rail, and sent him into the Cahaba River (near River Bend). He had drowned.

I hope this gets resolution of some kind. 55 years is a long time to be nameless.

https://identifyus.org/cases/13483

There are some useful identifiers but in the absence of fingerprints or DNA it's going to be difficult to identify him. Based on the age estimate, he was probably born in the mid to late 1940s which I'm guessing means his parents were born sometime in the 1920s or maybe earlier. It's therefore unlikely that either is still alive and even if they are they'd be of an age when dementia could reasonably be expected. That probably means identification will rely on a sibling old enough to remember both a brother who went missing and his tattoo. And of course willing to give a DNA sample.

I wonder if the driver of the car is still alive and has remembered anything else over the years such as if he mentioned a brother or sister or where he was heading. It's possible that, if he had indeed run away from home, he was heading for an older, married sibling's house.

As to height, if he was at the lower end of the age estimate it's possible he would still have grown a few inches before reaching his full adult height.

I tried to find River Bend but could only find the course of the Cahaba River, east of Birmingham.
 
I wonder if they were able to determine how old the tattoo was--whether it was freshly inked or faded more. Since he was so young, I wonder whether he had a family member that was in the tattoo business, and was able to ink him despite him being underage. A friend of mine has a tattoo artist as a sister, who has performed tattoos on underage relatives of hers. I imagine tattoos on kids were probably much rarer in 1961, too.

I also want to know how full the pack of Pall Malls was. Why would he be carrying cigarettes without a lighter? Did he intend to borrow other people's lighters? Also, why would he carry such an abundance of clothing, but no underwear, toothbrush/toothpaste, extra socks, soap, laundry detergent, a razor, etc.? How much money was in his wallet?
Could he have bought them for someone else, perhaps a girl he was planning to meet up with? I'm leaning away from that, since he told the driver he had run away from home because of his parent's separation, but apparently he didn't have the chance to delve deeper into that before dying.
 
I think the composite picture is a combination of an artist's rendering and possibly the actual pm photo, which might have been taken at an odd angle.
It kind of reminds me of the boy in the suitcase photos.
At a glance, I found nothing on NamUs from that time period.
 
I think the composite picture is a combination of an artist's rendering and possibly the actual pm photo,

Is this composite on the facebook page mentioned by Jake479? If so I'm unable to access it as the page seems to be restricted. Not on facebook, see ....
 
I wonder if they were able to determine how old the tattoo was--whether it was freshly inked or faded more.

It would also be useful to know whether the tattoo looked professionally done or an amateur job; the latter might suggest he had been in a young offenders' institution or care at some point.
 
I also want to know how full the pack of Pall Malls was. Why would he be carrying cigarettes without a lighter? Did he intend to borrow other people's lighters? Also, why would he carry such an abundance of clothing, but no underwear, toothbrush/toothpaste, extra socks, soap, laundry detergent, a razor, etc.?
Maybe he used matches and they just weren't found. Cars had cigarette lighters in them, too.
As for the rest of the items you mentioned, if he were close to the younger end of his age range, personal hygiene might not have been a priority, and he might not have known better if he were just starting out on his own.
 
Here's a link to the NCMEC poster with the picture, if that helps: http://www.missingkids.org/poster/NCMU/1250767/1

Thank you. So the tattoo was an amateur or home produced one. I'm guessing that throws up certain possibilities about his background.

How common were amateur tattoos at this period? How were they perceived by society at large? Here in the UK, well into the 1980s they were almost entirely restricted to bikers, prisoners, sailors and enlisted ranks soldiers, so very much a bottom of the social heap sort of thing.
 
I also searched Namus using the lost and found site and there is absolutely no one that matches this at all. Not in Doe Network either.
 
I also searched Namus using the lost and found site and there is absolutely no one that matches this at all. Not in Doe Network either.

I'm not surprised. Boys were more independent and self reliant back then, so his parents probably thought nothing of him striking out on his own. They could have believed he joined the military. Or, it could have been a case where the mum thought he was with the dad, and the dad believed him to be with his mum, when in truth, he was with neither one. If they were divorced, they may not have communicated after they parted ways, and had no idea he was even missing. I can see something like that happening.
 
http://www.wbrc.com/story/32129263/bibb-co-investigators-trying-to-solve-55-year-old-mystery

BIBB COUNTY, AL (WBRC) -

A nearly 60-year-old mystery in Centreville could soon be solved with advancements in technology.

On March 27, 1961, a young teen boy was hitchhiking and picked up along Highway 25 south of Wilton, near the Shelby-Bibb County line. Investigators say a short time later, the driver of the car lost control on River Bend Road in Centreville.

He went over the bridge and crashed into the river. He survived but the young boy did not.

"At that point and time, they were not able to find relatives of the boy. So the community came together and were able to bury him,” said Scott Cox, Bibb County’s Deputy Coroner.

The young boy was estimated to be 14 to 17 years old. The boy told the driver he ran away after his parents separated.

He was wearing a Timex wrist watch and had a suitcase full of clothes and pack of Pall Mall cigarettes with a South Carolina tax stamp on it.

"It would be a great thing to actually put a name with this person,” Cox said.

Next week, investigators are scheduled to exhume is body and extract his DNA.

The DNA will be set to a lab for analysis at the University of North Texas. Investigators are hoping advancements in technology will help solve this decades-old case.

"If he’s got any living relatives that have been wondering all these years what happened to their brother, son, cousin? To actually reunite someone that's still living so they can finally put closure to something they've been wondering about all their life,” Cox added.

Authorities say the boy was approximately 5’6’’ tall with light brown hair and blue eyes.

The boy also had a homemade tattoo with the words "R.Y. in love or "R + Y in love" on his left arm.

Anyone that can help identify the boy is asked to call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.
 
Follow up story from 06/09/2016.
The body of an unidentified teen hitchhiker killed 55 years ago in Bibb County is being exhumed this morning in a renewed effort to find out who he was.. .The exhumation began about 7 a.m. today and workers had reached the vault about 7:25 a.m. Lawrence said the remains will be taken to the Alabama Department of Forensic Science in Montgomery which will obtain the DNA samples to send to researchers at the University of North Texas. The boy's body will then be re-buried back in Centreville this afternoon
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/06/exhumation_underway_for_body_o.html
 
The only possibility I found was through another MP case because this boy doesn't appear to have a missing person report on file. It's 13 year old Robert Rasmussen who went missing with his friend Gerald Montrio in Plymouth, MA on 09/09/1957. It's possible that they drowned, but some folks in their families believe they staged their own disappearance because of their troubled lives and ran away. The 4 year difference would put Robert at the right age to be this UID.
How do we submit a potential match for a person who is known to be missing but doesn't have a case built anywhere?
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/montrio_gerald.html
 
Do they still have the picture of him and a girl with him. They can enhance that picture now.I feel if they put that picture out with his picture now. Someone might remember him.It could be his girl friend,sister or someone close to him. The article says The only other clue was a photo in his personal belongings that showed the boy with a girl. The images were so small that you couldn’t tell much about either of them.

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20051211/NEWS/512110375
 

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