A body found without a head or hands along a New York road nearly 56 years ago has been positively identified as a Pennsylvania man, authorities have announced.
The man’s identity remained a mystery in the decades following the discovery of his body on Davis Hill Road in Andover on March 20, 1970, according to New York State Police.
After investigators revisited the cold case in June 2022, when his body was exhumed, police and the FBI used DNA collected from his remains to identify the man as Clyde A. Coppage, state police said in a Thursday, March 12, news release.
Coppage, who was 35 when he died, had been living in Genesee, Pennsylvania, ahead of his death, police said. Genesee is located near the Pennsylvania-New York border.
Coppage was “not originally from” Andover, where his body was found, “and had never been reported missing,” according to state police.
His Pennsylvania hometown is about a 15-mile drive southwest from Andover.
It is unclear who might have killed Coppage, as authorities have not specified any potential suspects.
“The investigation into the death of Coppage remains open and active,” state police said.
Othram, a DNA lab and genetic genealogy company that helps authorities solve cold cases through forensic science, worked with investigators to confirm Coppage’s identity.
In addition to Coppage missing his head and hands, authorities also found an X carved onto Coppage’s chest when they located his body, according to a news release shared by DNASolves, a database run by Othram.
Authorities suspected he was possibly killed by an alleged gang, the release said.
Othram also recently helped New York investigators identify a suspect in the cold case murder of Barbara Waldman, the company confirmed in an email to Us Weekly.
DNA evidence revealed that Waldman, a mother who was found dead inside her Long Island, New York, home in January 1974, was killed by a man named Thomas Generazio, according to authorities, Us previously reported.
Generazio died in 2004, when he was 57, the Nassau County Police Department said in a Wednesday, March 11 news release.
In a statement shared with Us on the deaths of both Waldman and Coppage, Othram’s chief development officer Kristen Mittelman said that “In both of the cases, families have been waiting for decades for answers and now they know more because of DNA technology.”
“Using DNA and forensic genetic genealogy, we’re going to continue solving cases and giving families answers,” Mittelman added.
New York State Police is asking anyone with information related to Coppage to call the agency at (585) 344-6200.
