Unknown, Unclaimed

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In February, 1974 a man was found dead. His identity was unknown and remained that way. The county medical examiner was usually able to pair a name to remains, "except for an occasional fetus or skeleton found in the Everglades." He's been of those exceptions.

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Sketch of John Doe found in North Miami c.1974

It was a mild, winter morning in North Miami when Louis Severson, 75, decided it was a good day to fish from a canal on Biscayne Bay Drive in Keystone Point. Severson lived in the Green Acres Mobile Village in Hallandale, and had traveled there by automobile. He did a double take when he saw about 150 feet off the roadway, what he thought was a mannequin. He put his line in the water, but after a couple of hours with no luck, his curiosity got the better of him. He walked over to it, and then realized it wasn't a mannequin.

Severson drove around the neighborhood hoping to spot a policeman, but like his fishing attempt, he met with no luck. He stopped at a nearby construction site and asked two men there, Dan Villella and Larry Gordon, if they would look at what he thought was a corpse. The men returned with him, and confirmed what the old man already suspected. There was no pulse and rigor mortis had just set in. The man was face down on a grassy spot, 3 feet from some pine trees and 3 feet west of a dirt road leading to the canal.

Soon the cops were on the scene, and the description of the man was: "white, age perhaps 18 to 25, 5'4", weighing 137 pounds." He had 70 cents in a pant pocket and nothing else. His head lay on an old sprinkler head, and nearby was a piece of paper with no writing on it. The most telling clue was the body's lividity. An investigator for the medical examiner later stated, "The lividity was not all consistent with the position of the body. Someone had to have left the body there, placed it or dumped it."

The body had been found at the end of the street which ended in a cul-de-sac. It could have been dropped off by a vehicle, but more easily it could have been transported by a boat under the cover of night and left where it lay.

The Eisenbergs who lived at 13355 Biscayne Bay Dr., right next to where the body was found, had not seen the man's body only a few feet from their home.

​There were multiple faint needle marks on both arms, and a trace of barbiturates were on the marks. Toxicology came back positive for opiates and morphine, both ingredients of heroin. The medical examiner found that despite the evidence pointing to an overdose there was something different about this victim.

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​His clothing were expensive and clean. 'He wore a new tie-dyed, long sleeved shirt, blue, seven buttons down the front, two buttons on the cuffs. The label was 'Hutspah'. The undershirt, small, dark brown, heavy rib was '909 Collection'. The denim dungarees with flare bottoms had no hems, front pockets only, and a purple label, 'Live Ins'. There were no undershorts. The belt was 1 1/2 inches wide, soft dark leather. About size 34. The shoes were a soft moccasin-type buckskin, lace up to the shins. Size 8. U. S. patent 3.946.069. There was a 3 inch fringe at the top.' The medical examiner noted, 'He had to have had money.' 

This John Doe was not found in FBI database or any missing person's report

His eyes were brown, his mustache was thick and his hair reached his shoulders. There was a touch of blond bleaching, barely perceptible. His teeth were excellent. Examination of the corpse found a 10 1/2 inch, diagonal scar across the abdomen. His appendix was still there, but his spleen had been removed, most probably because he had been in some type of accident.

The FBI returned negative matches to his fingerprints, and a BOLO was sent out nationwide, and there was no response. Even Interpol was sent the information, and nothing came back.

The students at Miami Dade College embalming school worked on the corpse and returned it to the medical examiner's office. Without anyone coming forward to offer information on his identity or what happened to him, he was interred in potter's field. But perhaps after 50 years someone can offer a clue to who was the young man that looked "like he wandered from the movie set of Jesus Christ Superstar".

Another mystery tied to this John Doe is that present day there is no reference to this case (74-393), neither in the county medical examiner's database or in the nationwide NamUs. Beyond the few articles written during March, 1974, no further reference is made to this macabre discovery. Keystone Point in North Miami is populated by multi-million dollar homes intersected by canals, and this cold case has been long forgotten.

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