Police in Wisconsin have finally solved a half-century-old mystery surrounding bones found in a music store’s chimney.
The DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that uses genealogy to identify unidentified people, said the body matched that of Ronnie Joe Kirk from Tulsa, Oklahoma. wisconsin state journal report.
But how he got there and how he died remain unknown.
Kirk disappeared in 1970 after losing contact with his family.
His skeletal remains, including his skull, were discovered in September 1989 by the owner of a Madison music store at the bottom of the chimney of a University Avenue building that has now been demolished.
For decades, he was known only as “The Chimney Woman.”
Madison Detective Lindsey Ludden contacted the DNA Doe Project in 2018 and provided a hair sample taken from Chimney Doe’s skull. In 2021, it was sent to Astrea Forensics, a California-based DNA sequencing company that specializes in degraded samples.
Gwen Knapp of the DNA Doe Project said it took more than two years to develop a suitable DNA profile to investigate Kirk’s interesting family tree.
Born in 1942, Kirk was adopted, married and divorced twice, and had three children.
“This was a very unique case involving adoption and multiple generations of disparate marriages, despite relatively close DNA matches within the family,” Knapp said. “We are thrilled to have Ronnie Kirk’s name back and hope his family can find some closure in Ronnie’s long disappearance.”
Madison Police Department spokeswoman Stephanie Fryer said Kirk’s last known contact with relatives was in 1970, when he divorced his second wife in Missouri.
Kirk has two children from his first marriage and one child from his second marriage. They were all in their 50s and did not know each other before investigators contacted them. Both of his ex-wives have remarried.
No additional information has been provided about Kirk’s family, but police say they are asking for privacy at this time.
Madison Police Chief Shon Burns said investigators will next determine who Kirk was and how he ended up in Wisconsin. No missing persons report has been filed for Kirk, who has ties to Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Alabama.
Burns said the coroner’s office will also reanalyze the bones.
Authorities have long believed that a “severe” pelvic fracture was involved in his death, estimated to have occurred approximately two years before the bones were discovered.
However, a 1957 newspaper article reported that a 14-year-old boy named Ronnie Joe Kirk was hit by a car while riding a scooter, perhaps explaining this mysterious injury. It seems that.
with post wire
