A photo of Frank Little from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District was used to compare a clay model of remains found in Twinsburg in 1982.
The remains of a man were found in Twinsburg nearly 40 years ago.
Who he is might surprise you.
Frankie Little was a guitarist and a writer for The O'Jays. The R&B group made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The investigators discovered Little's identity with the help of genealogy research. The state crime lab made a clay model of the man's skull, but it failed to solve the case.
Authorities need the public's help in identifying remains found in Twinsburg.
The facial reconstruction of a man whose remains were found more than 30 years ago was unveiled today by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. A forensic artist with the Attorney General's Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation created a clay model to help identify the man.
The Summit County Medical Examiner was able to give a name to the remains and give them to his family.
The next step is to figure out who killed Little and how his remains ended up in a garbage bag. Kohler said his death will be ruled a homicide.
Little was born in Cleveland in 1943. He was a member of the O'Jays and wrote several songs, including "Do the Jerk" and "Oh, How You Hurt Me." The band's best known hits include "Love Train"
Little served in the Vietnam War and in the U.S. Army. He was last seen in the area of East 105th Street and Superior Avenue in Cleveland in the mid-1970s. There is no information about his disappearance.
The remains were found.
The skull was found in the woods by employees of the machine shop on Cannon Road. They were not sure what they found.
Twinsburg detective Eric Hendershott said that when they saw the skull, they didn't think it was human. They showed it to others.
The garbage bag with more remains was found when police searched the property.
The remains, which were not a complete set, were determined to be those of a black male, 20 to 35 years old, who may have had a curvature of the spine.
The remains were there for between two and four years. The man's remains had nothing to do with police identification.
Hendershott said there was bones in a garbage bag.
The public and other law enforcement agencies were appealed to by the detectives. The case went cold after they ruled out a few leads.
The case was reopened in 2009, after Sgt. Greg Feketik looked into the idea of using DNA to identify the man.
The Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI's DNA database, produced no hits after the man's DNA was put into it.
A professor at Kent State created a sketch of the skull of a man. A forensic artist with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation made a clay model of a skull.
A forensic artist is looking at unidentified remains.
In March of last year, a forensic artist for the Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation worked on the early stages of a Jane Doe.
It is possible to research genealogy.
In October of last year, detectives from the city of Akron contacted Twinsburg to see if the remains were of a missing person. The tip didn't pan out, but it did cause a fire in Hendershott to try and identify the remains.
He said it occurred to him that time was running out. People won't be alive to remember him soon.
Hendershott knew that the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, had been identified through the use of genetic genealogy and that another case in Eastlake had been solved this way. He wondered if the same technique could be used for Twinburg's oldest unsolved case.
He said he was hopeful. I was not sure or confident.
Hendershott reached out to the project in September. The group uses genetic genealogy to help identify people.
The volunteers with the Doe Project compared the remains with the profiles in GedMatch and Family Tree DNA, two public genealogy databases. They began to build family trees to try and find family members of the man.
Several names were provided to Hendershott by the researchers.
Hendershott called a woman in Cleveland and found out that she had a cousin who had gone missing. She didn't know much about him, but he had a brother who lived in Georgia.
Hendershott obtained a sample from the brother.
Kohler confirmed Little's identity after analyzing the sample.
Little was identified in 10 of the 25 missing persons cases that Chan has worked on.
Chan said it was exciting for these long cases.
Chan said that people can help solve missing person cases by entering their genetic information into a public database.
Chan said that it will help bring your loved one home faster.
What are the next steps?
They hope to find Little's killer now that they have identified him.
Little's daughter died in 2012 and her son is still alive in the Cleveland area.
Hendershott wants to find his son to see if he has more information about his father. He said Little's brother didn't stay in touch with his nephew.
The detective said Little's brother remembered the last conversation he had with Little but not much else.
Walter Williams, one of the members of the O'Jays, was told by Hendershott that Little was a guitarist. He said that Williams told him that Little wrote songs with Eddie.
There are many questions about Little.
The detective said that part of the mystery is over, but they don't know how he got there, how he disappeared or where he lived until the end of his life.
Kohler plans to rule Little's death a homicide, based on the injuries he sustained and the attempt to hide them. She said she will finish Little's death certificate once his family members make arrangements.
Kohler said that the detectives would determine who killed Little. She said her office will be happy to help.
She said that detectives would have to look at what they have and decide if there is anything more they can do.
Thebeaconjournal.com can be reached at swarsmith@ thebeaconjournal.com.
Do you have any tips?
Twinsburg detectives are looking for anyone with information on Frank Little's disappearance and murder. Eric Hendershott can be reached at 330-405-5679 or ehendershott@twinsburg.oh.us.
The Twinsburg remains were identified through genealogy research.
