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Jul 10, 2023

Niagara County seeks to exhume body buried 29 years ago

The Niagara County Attorney’s Office is seeking an emergency court order to exhume the body of an unidentified man who was recovered from Lake Ontario 29 years ago. The request is a first for the

The Niagara County Attorney’s Office is seeking an emergency court order to exhume the body of an unidentified man who was recovered from Lake Ontario 29 years ago.

The request is a first for the Niagara County Attorney’s Office, according to First Assistant County Attorney Katherine D. Alexander. Such requests for an exhumation are typically made in criminal cases by the district attorney’s office.

“But because there’s no open criminal investigation relating to this body, there’s a different procedure that we researched to try to find how to go about exhuming this body with the hopes that we could get that permission,” Alexander said Wednesday.

The aim, she said, is to hopefully bring some closure to a Canadian family that has been waiting for decades to find out what happened to their loved one.

On June 17, 1994, Niagara County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to the lake, about 7½ miles from Olcott Harbor, where they found the body of a 6-foot, 2-inch white man weighing about 190 pounds, according to court papers filed by Alexander. He was described as having been between 25 and 30 years old, with brown hair and a receding hairline, dressed in Levi Strauss blue jeans made in Canada, and a black zipper sweatshirt, light blue T-shirt with “Rush Programs” printed on it. He was also wearing Nike high top sneakers, and white socks with red and blue rings at the top.

After attempts to identify the body proved unsuccessful, the remains were buried by Niagara County on Nov. 2, 1994, at a private cemetery in Newfane.

Then, on Nov. 29, 1994, details about the case were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Person System.

“An autopsy was done on the body but at that point, back in 1994, DNA science wasn’t as advanced as it is now. So, at that time, based on what they had, they couldn’t make any identification,” Alexander said.

However, simultaneously, the Niagara Regional Police in Canada were investigating a missing persons case involving 33-year-old St. Catherines, Ont., man. Paul Tenke was last seen alive on May 21, 1994, when he left his home. Tenke was described in a Niagara Regional Police report as a 6-foot-1 white male, weighing between 175 and 180 pounds, with brown hair. He was dressed in a black sweatshirt, blue jeans and white running shoes when he was last seen. The Niagara Regional Police report also described Tenke as having been suicidal and under the care of a doctor for mental health issues at the time of his disappearance.

Still, it was over two decades later that the Ontario Provincial Police Missing Persons and Unidentified Bodies Unit made a potential connection between the Tenke case and the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office’s unidentified body, after consulting the National Missing Children/Persons and Unidentified Remains database.

“Canada had done some analyses based on data from the international missing children and persons databases and they found some dental records that they felt might be a match,” said Alexander. “They were close, but they couldn’t specifically identify that it was this person. So the hope now is that, if we can get permission to exhume the body, we can get better DNA samples to compare to a family member who lives in Canada in order for them to make that positive identification.”

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