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

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Beamie said:
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
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.
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I'm one of the Freaks who contributed to fund the research for DNA results. We couldn't be prouder. New member so not sure on where to past...
 
There is an absolutely beautiful interview with Danny's brother in this article, which explains so many things, including why he was so hard to identify:

Killed in a 1961 Crash, ‘Unknown Boy’ Is Finally Identified

"Mr. West spoke on the phone last week with an older brother of Danny’s, Don Hamilton, of Seminole, Fla. They both started crying.

Mr. Hamilton, 77, said in an interview that he, Danny and another brother, David, grew up in a severely abusive household. David, two years his senior, had also run away, and Mr. Hamilton hasn’t heard from him since.

Their alcoholic stepfather whipped their bare backs with a belt and burned their fingers with matches. The brothers went weekends at a time without food. Their mother told them she wished they had never been born, Mr. Hamilton said. The mother and stepfather are deceased.

Mr. Hamilton escaped as soon as he could, joining the Army at age 17.

Despite his childhood, Mr. Hamilton made a good life for himself. He had a 30-year career in the Army, retiring in 1989 as a sergeant major. He met his wife while stationed in Germany, fell in love and has been married for more than 40 years. He has two daughters and eight grandchildren. A high school dropout, he earned an associate’s degree in business management in the 1990s and was a nutrition coordinator for many years."

ETA - He talked about Danny being fragile because of polio, which probably is why the initial information said he may have had a "limp." I hope genealogists can help Don find his other brother - there were three of them.
 
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branmuffin said:
Do you have a link to that information? The DA's I find with criminal records appear much younger. Thanks.
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I think they just made reference to a vagrancy charge in Florida for David in 1963, which isn't really too helpful, and doesn't bode too well for finding him (speaking from past personal research experiences), I suspect.
 
ntt1 said:
I think they just made reference to a vagrancy charge in Florida for David in 1963, which isn't really too helpful, and doesn't bode too well for finding him (speaking from past personal research experiences), I suspect.
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I have found someone around his age but didn't see any criminal record. Would a vagrancy charge still be on your record after nearly 60 years? I know I've read that the US had a blanket vagrancy law that allowed them to sweep up people without reason. A charge isn't a conviction though, so does that hold any weight?
 
branmuffin said:
I have found someone around his age but didn't see any criminal record. Would a vagrancy charge still be on your record after nearly 60 years? I know I've read that the US had a blanket vagrancy law that allowed them to sweep up people without reason. A charge isn't a conviction though, so does that hold any weight?
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I think the significance of it was merely that it was a mention or proof of life post-1960s (can't quite recall the year), when he was said to have run away/lost contact with his brother.
 
momsof3 said:
There is an absolutely beautiful interview with Danny's brother in this article, which explains so many things, including why he was so hard to identify:

Killed in a 1961 Crash, ‘Unknown Boy’ Is Finally Identified

"Mr. West spoke on the phone last week with an older brother of Danny’s, Don Hamilton, of Seminole, Fla. They both started crying.

Mr. Hamilton, 77, said in an interview that he, Danny and another brother, David, grew up in a severely abusive household. David, two years his senior, had also run away, and Mr. Hamilton hasn’t heard from him since.

Their alcoholic stepfather whipped their bare backs with a belt and burned their fingers with matches. The brothers went weekends at a time without food. Their mother told them she wished they had never been born, Mr. Hamilton said. The mother and stepfather are deceased.

Mr. Hamilton escaped as soon as he could, joining the Army at age 17.

Despite his childhood, Mr. Hamilton made a good life for himself. He had a 30-year career in the Army, retiring in 1989 as a sergeant major. He met his wife while stationed in Germany, fell in love and has been married for more than 40 years. He has two daughters and eight grandchildren. A high school dropout, he earned an associate’s degree in business management in the 1990s and was a nutrition coordinator for many years."

ETA - He talked about Danny being fragile because of polio, which probably is why the initial information said he may have had a "limp." I hope genealogists can help Don find his other brother - there were three of them.
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What a brutal childhood these three brothers had. I can see why ,there was no missing report ever filed by there mother and step father. And back in the day, there would not have been resources for the brother to report his brothers missing.
 
branmuffin said:
I have found someone around his age but didn't see any criminal record. Would a vagrancy charge still be on your record after nearly 60 years? I know I've read that the US had a blanket vagrancy law that allowed them to sweep up people without reason. A charge isn't a conviction though, so does that hold any weight?
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It would require that the record be available digitally. I'm not even familiar with this case, so I don't know if a family member said there was a vagrancy arrest or if LE in Florida said there was a vagrancy arrest. Vagrancy is a bit like a parking or traffic ticket. My son received a ticket in 2015 and he was in car accident which was his fault. I'm not seeing my son's ticket in my online background/traffic record check.
 
In the search for David what are the circumstances there would be a DNA hit if he is also an unidentified person? I know Bobby Whitt and his mother were unidentified together for years and the break was the connection being discovered.

With David being last seen in Dade County FL in 1963 I looked at 1960's FL does. With him it is a lot harder without his info (height, hair color, distinguishing marks, etc). Like the brother I hold out hope he is alive somewhere. I wonder if he will officially be reported missing.
 
aThousandYearsWide said:
In the search for David what are the circumstances there would be a DNA hit if he is also an unidentified person? I know Bobby Whitt and his mother were unidentified together for years and the break was the connection being discovered.

With David being last seen in Dade County FL in 1963 I looked at 1960's FL does. With him it is a lot harder without his info (height, hair color, distinguishing marks, etc). Like the brother I hold out hope he is alive somewhere. I wonder if he will officially be reported missing.
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That's a tough one. I think what happened in the Bobby Whitt case was one or both of their DNA profiles weren't in CODIS and were being held locally, or they should have matched. A NamUs rep assured me Doe profiles were compared to one another if they were both in CODIS. So them both not being in there is the only explanation I can come up with, if what the rep told me was true.
Truth be told, I'm not sure why one of us didn't link Bobby and his mum together. I know hindsight is 20/20, but when I went back and looked at their cases, their ethnicity, the relatively short time span in which they were found from each other, the locations where they were found in, even though different states, all pointed to a possible relationship. We're pretty clever here, but I'm confounded it also escaped professionals who are trained in putting two and two together.
 
I just had a dream ~3 hours ago that Danny was identified. I woke up, upset that the dream wasn't real. But I couldn't help but look up his case, and when I did, I found that he was identified just recently. Truly unbelievable. This case always hurt my heart because of how lonely and desperate the boy must've been, and how close the driver was to knowing his name. And who was that girl in the picture? Was the inscription on his arm a reference to her?

I'm saddened by what he and his brothers went through but incredibly happy that he can finally rest in peace with his name. Hopefully David will be relocated sometime soon.
 
Alleykins said:
That's a tough one. I think what happened in the Bobby Whitt case was one or both of their DNA profiles weren't in CODIS and were being held locally, or they should have matched. A NamUs rep assured me Doe profiles were compared to one another if they were both in CODIS. So them both not being in there is the only explanation I can come up with, if what the rep told me was true.
Truth be told, I'm not sure why one of us didn't link Bobby and his mum together. I know hindsight is 20/20, but when I went back and looked at their cases, their ethnicity, the relatively short time span in which they were found from each other, the locations where they were found in, even though different states, all pointed to a possible relationship. We're pretty clever here, but I'm confounded it also escaped professionals who are trained in putting two and two together.
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Hindsight definitely will do that for sure! With Bobby in particular they initially misidentified him as being of hispanic descent and they had been speculating he was a part of a harvesting group that passed through the area annually. His father also kept him alive longer than his mother by atleast two months and their remains were found in different stages with Bobby being skeletal and his Mom being within hours after death. I always wondered if they would have connected the dots if he was known to be of Asian descent from the beginning. Bobby's was a pet case of mine for the past 10 years or so.

With Danny's identification being through genetic ancestry would that make it any easier to find David? Another question I have about codis is which cases qualify to be added and which doesn't?
 
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