Gardaí hope DNA will help identify man whose body was recovered from river Lee in Cork 25 years ago

Gardaí are hoping that an international missing persons database will help them obtain a DNA match and identify a man whose identity has remained unknown since his body was recovered from the river Lee just outside Cork city more than 25 years ago.

Coroner Frank O’Connell obtained an order from Minister for Justice Helen McEntee earlier this year to allow the man’s remains be exhumed. Officers from the Garda Missing Persons Unit in Dublin attended the exhumation on Tuesday morning.

A team of gravediggers, accompanied by officers from the Missing Persons Unit, Garda crime scene examiners and an environmental health officer from Cork County Council, began the exhumation at St Patrick’s Cemetery in Bandon in west Cork at 8am on Tuesday.

Forensic anthropologist Dr Laureen Buckley oversaw the removal of the man’s remains from the graveyard to the morgue at Cork University Hospital, where she extracted DNA samples that will be sent to the Forensic Science Ireland laboratory in Celbridge, Co Kildare.

Scientists at Forensic Science Ireland will try to obtain a match between the man’s DNA and records stored in the Irish national DNA database.

Gardaí will also forward the results of the tests to Interpol to see if a match can be found with DNA samples stored at the global DNA database I-Familia. The database seeks to identify missing persons or unidentified human remains when direct comparison is not possible, by using DNA samples from family members instead.

The man had no identifying documentation on him when his remains were recovered from the Lee at the western end of the Lee Fields, upstream of Cork City, on July 23rd, 1999 by Cork City Fire Brigade.

The remains were too badly decomposed to allow for facial recognition or for fingerprints to be taken at the postmortem, which was held in the old Cork City Morgue at White Street.

The man was also missing all his teeth, so dental identification was not possible. Gardaí believe he was a well-built male, approximately 5ft 9in to 5ft 10in in height and possibly aged between 50 and 60 years old.

Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster was satisfied the man had not been the victim of foul play, and died from drowning.

When he was recovered from the river Lee, the man was wearing navy trousers, a beige jumper, a short-sleeved green jumper, a red-and-white striped silk shirt, a brown belt, two pairs of socks and a pair of brown boots.

He was also wearing a silver Philip Mercier watch with a gold face on his right wrist and holy medals around his neck and in his pockets. He had a set of wooden Rosary beads and a bunch of keys attached to a horseshoe-shaped keyring with the words Good Luck McGinty inscribed on it.