Unknown man buried in Twin Cities cemetery identified with help from the DNA Doe Project
INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. — After nearly 40 years, an unknown man buried in a Minnesota cemetery has been identified.
The gravestone in Prairie Oaks Memorial Eco Gardens in Inver Grove Heights reads "Unknown Male / 1985 / In God's Loving Care".
The man was the first person ever buried in the cemetery, which was known then as Inver Hills Memorial Cemetery.
In 2017, the BCA contacted the cemetery's owner, Jon Weber, about reopening the investigation.
"We opened the vault, pulled the casket," Weber said. "He left, then when he came back, he was reinterred."
DNA samples pulled from the body went to a nonprofit this year called the DNA Doe Project.
Their volunteer genealogists have identified more than 130 unknown human remains.
"We got very lucky with this case," said Sara Hoffman, one of the DNA Doe Project team members. "We had a fairly close DNA match. I believe it was a second or third cousin."
Hoffman says that match helped build a family tree.
"We went all the way back to Italian birth records from the 1800s...and we were able to make connections and we focused in on this family and we saw that Frank [Augenti] had no proof of life after about 1984, 1985," she said.
Hoffman says her team shared Augenti's name with law enforcement, who reached out to family members and confirmed the man was, in fact, Augenti.
Frank Augenti was born in Pennsylvania. His frozen body was found in an abandoned building in St. Paul in 1985.
Augenti was 33. Officials don't suspect foul play.
"You have that instant elation of, 'We've solved it,' and in the same split second, you feel immense grief because you realize this is a family member who was loved," Hoffman said. "There's the finality that this is what happened, and this is your loved one. It's heartbreaking."
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office says Augenti had siblings who were contacted when he was identified, and his death certificate has been updated to include his name.
"Everybody is born with a name and they deserve the dignity of being buried with their name," Hoffman said.
Weber says he plans to try to contact the family to ask if they'd like a new gravestone made.
The DNA Doe Project cannot access DNA databases of consumer companies like Ancestry or 23andMe.
Hoffman says their genealogists work with databases from DNA Justice, GEDmatch, and FamilyTreeDNA.
She says the more people who upload their DNA profiles, the more success investigators will have in identifying unknown remains.
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