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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On January 15th, 1929, a human jawbone was found on a quiet Australian beach. The discovery set in motion an unbelievable mystery.
Decade after decade, dedicated investigators came and went, but the case grew colder each day. The question remained, would the unidentified victim ever be identified? An international, decades-long search to identify the bones stirred the imagination of all who heard the story. Would this mystery ever be solved?
Could modern forensic science finally unveil the answers that have eluded investigators for generations? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 200, The Sandy Point John Doe Story.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Before we get to the episode, we've got a new supporter to thank, Gianna D. Thanks so much for becoming the show's newest supporter on Patreon. Now, let's get to this week's special episode. Thank you so much for listening to this very special episode of Forensic Tales, episode 200.
Before we get to the Sandy Point John Doe story, I want to take a moment just to thank you. Thank you so much for supporting the show for the last three and a half years now. Whether this is the first episode you've ever heard or if you've been listening since the very beginning. Thank you so much for the continued support of Forensic Tales. And I look forward to celebrating the next 200 episodes.
And with that, please enjoy this special episode. On January 15th, 1929, a human jawbone was discovered on the beach at shallow inlet near Sandy Point, Victoria, Australia, a small waterway on the south coast of Victoria and southeast of Melbourne. Since there wasn't much they could do in 1929, the jawbone was simply collected and stored away.
The hope was that additional body parts would eventually wash up on the beach and they could be used to figure out who the jawbone belonged to. But nothing like that happened for decades. On Christmas Day 2017, a snorkeler spotted something strange while exploring the ocean floor in shallow inlet, the same exact spot where the jawbone was discovered decades earlier.
Now, on any other day, not much happens there. Maybe a few other snorkelers are out there exploring the area, or you might see a few fishermen in their small boats trying to catch fish. But this particular day was different. While looking across the ocean floor, he saw something that instantly caught his attention. At first, he wasn't quite sure what it was. Maybe his eyes were playing a trick on him. But when he took a second look, he knew exactly what he was looking at.
bones. As someone who spent a lot of time in the water, this snorkeler knew that the bones didn't look like they came from a fish or any other type of water animal. His first thought was that they were human, a human skull to be exact. Now the snorkeler might not have known it then, but his discovery would set into motion an investigation that would unravel a 95-year mystery.
Police divers dove to the bottom of the ocean floor where they found exactly what the snorkeler saw, a human skull. But when they expanded their search, they found more bones. Buried beneath 20 centimeters of sand near the skull, the police divers found a complete skeleton. They found everything except for the jawbone.
But they only found bones during their search. No clothes, nothing else. Whoever this person was would need to be identified with only bones. Right away, the police knew that this wouldn't be your straightforward death investigation. For starters, this was a really unusual place to find a body.
The shallow inlet wasn't a place known for finding bodies, whether it was someone who accidentally drowned or even had their bodies dumped there. It just wasn't that type of place. Second, the only evidence investigators had to work with were bones. No ID, no clothing, not even skin. They basically had nothing.
We all look similar as humans when we're stripped away from our clothing and our skin. Our bones are the same. You can't immediately tell whether we're male or we're female, where we come from or what our ancestry is. Bones are simply bones, at least to the untrained naked eye. So there wasn't anything they could do to try and figure out who this person was, at least not right away, let alone try to figure out how they ended up in the water.
And finally, there weren't any clues to suggest how this person died. Not only would it be hard to ID this mystery person, but it was also going to be an uphill battle trying to figure out exactly what happened to him or her. Did he or she drown? Did they accidentally fall in? Was it a homicide victim? Maybe the water was the killer's dump site.
Without identification or any obvious clues on the body, investigators simply didn't have any answers to these questions. Without figuring out who this person was, the police handed over the remains to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Australia's largest forensic science institute. The bones were looked at by an anthropologist, Dr. Samantha Robentham, and a forensic pathologist, Dr. Matthew Lynch.
They were also sent to a forensic anthropologist to try and find any clues about who this person was or even be able to figure out how old they were. Based on everything they could find, they believed the remains came from a Caucasian male likely to be somewhere between 21 and 37 years old. And based on the size and length of the bones, they estimated he was about 169.7 centimeters tall or 5'5".
But that was all they could really figure out because, one, the bones were so old, and two, they had clearly been in the water for years, probably decades. Odontologist Dr. Lindahl-Smith also provided the police with a report. In his report, he agreed with most of the findings that the other three experts did, the anthropologist, the forensic pathologist, and the forensic anthropologist. But there was one key difference in his report.
He thought the man might be as old as 50. Now, the original experts said they believed 21 to 37. And Dr. Smith agreed with the 21 years old part. He didn't think that he could be any younger than that. But based on his examination of the remains, he thought he could be as old as 50 rather than 37. He also talked about the man's dental work.
Based on his review of his teeth, he believed he had received dental work in another country, quite possibly the U.S. He didn't think the quality of his dental work was something that was done in Australia, which made him think that he got it done somewhere overseas. This also suggested the man might not even be from Australia. Maybe that's just simply where his remains ended up.
After an anthropologist, forensic pathologist, forensic anthropologist, and an odontologist failed to identify this man, the remains were sent to a molecular biologist. Despite there only being bones, the molecular biologist was still able to pull a partial nuclear DNA profile and a complete mitochondrial DNA profile.
Both sets of DNA profiles were compared to all of the Victorian missing persons profiles in the Victorian Missing Persons DNA database. But they didn't find a match. The DNA didn't belong to anyone in the system. But this really didn't surprise anyone. They knew the remains had probably been in the water for decades before they were found in 2017.
So the chances of having this person's DNA profile on record anywhere were pretty much slim to none. If this person died as early as the 1920s, as they originally suspected, there was no chance they would have his DNA on record. But still, they tried it anyway because nothing had worked until that point.
By April of 2018, the mystery man's DNA profile was submitted to other databases, but this time outside of Victoria. But again, to no one's surprise, they didn't get any hits. So the man simply became known as the Sandy Point John Doe. Experts at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine then tried radiocarbon dating, which
a method for determining the age of an artifact, and in this case, the remains. Based on the radiocarbon dating results, they determined that with a 95% probability, Sandy Point John Doe lived sometime between 1666 and 1942. But that's not very helpful, right? 1666 is way different than living in 1942, right?
So although the radiocarbon dating helped provide somewhat of a timeline for when this person was alive, it wasn't exactly useful. For the next two years, the remains stayed at the Institute. If new testing emerged, they tried it. But nothing seemed to lead them anywhere until there became a theory. One theory that seemed to gain traction, could Sandy Point John Doe be the infamous Martin Weyberg?
For over 140 years, the story of Martin Weyberg has become equivalent to the U.S.'s story of D.B. Cooper. Now, for those that don't know, in 1971, a man using the alias D.B. Cooper hijacked a U.S. airliner and parachuted out of it with $200,000, the equivalent of $1.4 million in today's dollars. And to this day, neither D.B. Cooper nor the money have ever been found.
What actually happened to him after he jumped out of that airplane remains a mystery. Well, a lot of people consider Martin Weyberg Australia's D.B. Cooper. Back in 1877, a Norwegian ship's carpenter, Martin Weyberg, managed to steal 5,000 gold British coins that would be worth millions of dollars today. Most of those gold coins have never been found.
Now, after he stole the gold, he was eventually caught and arrested. But just as mysterious as stealing the gold was, he also managed to escape prison not just once, but multiple times. The authorities believe he ultimately drowned in 1883 off a boat in Australia. So the question became, could Sandy Point John Doe be the real Martin Weyberg? The remains could have belonged to him,
but they also could have belonged to anyone else from that area. Plus, shallow inlet where the bones were found was about 40 kilometers away from where Martin was believed to have drowned and died. So it's impossible to say how exactly his remains would have ended up there. After spending over three years trying to identify the Sandy Point John Doe, the Australian authorities provided an update on the case on February 11th, 2020.
Under Australia's Coroner's Act of 2008, they decided to officially close the investigation without an inquest being done. In other words, without an official investigation into the cause of Sandy Point John Doe's death. By 2020, they basically said they wouldn't look into the case anymore and wouldn't spend any more time or any more resources on it. In a public statement, the Australian coroner said, quote,
He also went on to say, End quote. End quote.
So investigators tried everything, including DNA and forensic testing, and nothing seemed to work. The case was essentially closed. Investigation over. Or was it? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Although the investigation into the Sandy Point John Doe case was officially closed by the Australian authorities in February 2020, some people just couldn't let it go. They couldn't stop wondering who this person was or what happened to him.
Some of these people even worked at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, even though it was their agency who recommended that the case be closed. Many of these forensic experts continue to work on the case.
Two months after it was officially closed, one of the coroners who worked at the Forensic Medicine Institute once again submitted Sandy Point John Doe's DNA profile to the National Criminal Investigation DNA database in April. They waited and hoped for a match, but nothing. Like all the previous attempts with DNA, there was no match.
For the next three years, several people who worked at the Institute tried different methods to get an identity. Some of them were ordered by the Institute itself, while others were basically unofficial attempts. Nothing happened in the case for years, until 2023.
In March 2023, the Victoria Institute of Forensic Medicine embarked on a pilot program to explore the use of forensic genetic genealogy to solve several Australian cold cases, including the case of the Sandy Point John Doe. They had heard all about forensic genetic genealogy and how it was being used in the U.S. to solve old cold cases, including John and Jane Doe's.
Most notable was the arrest of the Golden State Killer in April 2018. The process works by using genetic and genealogical methods to generate leads for law enforcement investigating crimes or trying to identify people. In most cases, they use unknown DNA collected at a crime scene to identify relatives of the unknown person. Sometimes they're looking for a suspect connected to a crime.
Other times, they're trying to identify someone. Since law enforcement agencies started using forensic genetic genealogy, it has become a complete game changer for many investigations. Before genetic genealogy, in many cold cases, they couldn't figure out who the unknown DNA belonged to. But now, by being able to identify relatives of the subject,
New leads, new clues, and past unidentified people were now being identified. So in early 2023, the Victoria Institute of Forensic Medicine applied to set aside the findings of the earlier coroner essentially closing the case. And they requested that the Sandy Point John Doe's case officially be reopened. In the application, they specifically mentioned that they wanted to try forensic genetic genealogy.
They believed they had new evidence and new information in the case that warranted a reopening. According to Professor Noel Woodford, the director of the institute who submitted the application, the Sandy Point John Doe case was, in his words, the perfect example of the type of case that this pilot program should include. It certainly was an old cold case, but
The identity of the deceased remained a mystery. The cause of death is unknown. And they've tried every other possible method to try and identify him. So if there was a case worthy of this pilot program exploring forensic genetic genealogy, it was the case of the Sandy Point John Doe.
Now, it took several weeks, but as soon as the application was approved, all of the skeletal remains left in the case were sent to Othram in the U.S., a private lab based in the woodlands of Texas specializing in genetic genealogy. Now, it's not uncommon or unheard of for law enforcement agencies or institutes to turn to private labs to have this type of forensic testing done.
In many cases, police departments don't have their own crime labs equipped with these types of machines and testing capabilities, or they just simply don't have the resources. So, enter Othram. But this type of advanced DNA and genetic testing isn't free, and it's certainly not cheap. Even just one of these cases can cost anywhere from $5,000 up to about $10,000, and sometimes even more than that.
So when law enforcement agencies, or in this case, institutes, want a lab to perform genetic genealogy, either on a DNA sample or on human remains, they have to first make sure that they have the money to do it. In Othram's case, most of the testing they do is either funded by donations or crowdfunding. Sometimes an individual person or an agency will pay for the testing to be done on a particular case.
And for others, cases are funded by multiple sources. Either way, the testing can't be done until they have enough money. So once the Australian officials secured the funding to pay for this type of advanced DNA testing, they shipped the skeletal remains to Othram in Texas.
Using what they call their proprietary forensic-grade genome sequencing, scientists at Othram were able to create a full genealogical profile of the man.
This is a massive step forward because typical methods to obtain DNA for identity purposes are generally not comprehensive enough to get a profile of someone who's both deceased and who has been submerged at sea for over 90 years. So they could only get a usable genealogical profile using Othram's more sophisticated methods.
Dr. Kristen Middleman, the chief development officer at Othram, told Crime Online this, quote, quote,
Unfortunately, most of these cases were failing at not being able to build this profile because they were using medical or consumer samples. And actually, all other companies are still doing so. What we did here at Authram is we built technology to be able to work with the most intractable evidence out there. The skull was found in saltwater, and it has floated around saltwater for 95 years.
you can imagine the contamination that takes place when DNA is exposed to those types of elements." After developing the DNA profile, it was returned to investigators in Australia. As soon as they got it back from Othram, they uploaded the new DNA profile to as many databases as they could get their hands on, searching for at least one relative of Sandy Point John Doe.
They knew the chances of his actual DNA being in any of these databases were still zero. But they didn't need to find an exact match to finally find an identity. All they really needed to do was find at least one good promising relative. Maybe a great-great-grandparent or a distant cousin. They only needed to find one person related to him. And this persistence paid off.
Several weeks after submitting the profile created by Othram to various DNA databases, they found a distant relative, a cousin of Sandy Point John Doe. Once they had identified one of his cousins, they spent the next several weeks building a complete family tree, with all the branches pointing to one particular person, Christopher Luke Moore.
But who is Christopher Luke Moore? Is he the real Sandy Point John Doe? Records from the 1920s show that Christopher Moore was once a farmer from Gippsland, a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia. He served in World War I for Australia. And after the war, he got married and became a father.
But when he was 29 years old, Christopher accidentally drowned while swimming with some friends at a beach on December 30th, 1928, a spot about 20 kilometers away from where the remains would eventually be found in shallow inlet. Christopher's friends and other beachgoers tried to save him once they realized that he was in trouble, but the current was too strong and no one could reach him in time. Now here's the interesting part.
Christopher's jawbone was found about a month after he died in January 1929. A local Sandy Point farmer found the jawbone on the beach, and Christopher's own father was called to look at it and see if it was his son. When Christopher's dad looked at the teeth, he instantly recognized them as his son's because he had distinct dental work. The jawbone belonged to Christopher, his son.
All the boxes were checked. The dental work matched, the jawbone where Christopher drowned, so the bones were identified as belonging to Christopher Moore. On January 24th, 1929, the coroner officially validated this identification. So how did Christopher Moore become a John Doe for the next 90 plus years?
Well, since Christopher was identified only by his jawbone, he was never reported missing, and he was never entered as a missing person in any database. At the time, they considered the case closed. So when the rest of Christopher's body was discovered decades later in 2017, no one was able to connect the dots.
They had no idea that he had already been identified because they only checked missing person databases. And again, Christopher was never reported missing. The authorities in Australia had no idea they actually found part of Christopher just a month after he died.
The next step was to find any living relatives of Christopher's to compare DNA. At this point, they had a pretty good idea that Sandy Point John Doe was in fact Christopher Luke Moore, but they needed to put the cherry on top. They needed DNA proof. Through investigative work, the authorities were able to track down a possible living grandniece of Christopher's.
When they reached out and spoke to her, she basically confirmed everything. She said she had a grand uncle who died in 1928 after he accidentally drowned while swimming with some friends. And she said she was happy to provide the authorities with a sample of her DNA. After the sample was received, it was compared to the profile that Othram created from the skeletal remains. Once the results were in, they confirmed everything the authorities already thought.
Sandy Point John Doe was, in fact, 29-year-old Christopher Moore. On July 27, 2023, Judge John Kane officially signed the document stating that Sandy Point John Doe was Christopher Moore. In the document, he outlined everything authorities did to get the identification. It also included Christopher's official cause of death over 90 years later, accidental drowning.
Case closed on a 95-year-old forensic science mystery. The resolution of this case served as a massive boost for Australia's pilot program using forensic genetic genealogy. Since Christopher's case, the state coroner is currently revisiting other cold cases to see if genetic genealogy can be used in any of those.
Currently, there are over 120 unsolved, unidentified human remain cases in just Victoria alone. So they are just beginning to reach the tip of the iceberg on what can be done with this type of advanced DNA testing. Authorities hope that forensic genetic genealogy can be used on at least one of these 120 unsolved cases.
and help bring closure to the loved ones of some of these unidentified people. If you'd like to help solve cases just like Christopher Moore's, consider donating to a genealogical research company like Authrem. To learn more about how you can help, visit DNAsolves.com.
You can also consider donating to a local private lab near you or contribute your own DNA to the database so that it can be used to help identify John and Jane Doe's or help identify suspects in criminal cases. Myself and Rockefeller Audio are proud monthly financial donors to DNA Solves. So if you would like to help, please consider donating. To share your thoughts on this story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.
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