BEAVER CREEK, Minn — Like many unsolved "John Doe" cases, the best visual representation authorities had for years of the 1981 Rock County John Doe was a computer composite sketch, created based on the man's skull.
Now, 41 years later, we have an actual photo and a name -- Louis Gattaino.
"We firmly believe we have the right person," said Rock County Sheriff Evan Verbrugge.
Verbrugge said in March 1981, a highway worker found the skeletal remains in a culvert at Interstate 90 and County Road 23.
They knew it was a homicide.
"There appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head," Verbrugge said.
But it wasn't until the rise of genetic genealogy -- the use of family tree ancestry websites with a DNA sample -- that the match was made.
The Rock County Sheriff's Office paid the nonprofit DNA Doe Project to use the DNA sample to build family trees until they found a match.
"The one family member we talked to, she didn't even know. She was a niece and didn't even know him," Sheriff Verbrugge said.
Then, they found a sister and half-brother who provided DNA samples for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to test and compare.
That confirmed Louis Gattaino, a once infamous bank robber in the 1960s was their missing family member.
According to an article in the New York Daily News in 1966, Gattaino demanded $96,000 from a Park Avenue bank, but he was arrested after the bank teller overpowered him and his gun fired into the counter.
The then-20-year-old was also charged with robbing a bank in Omaha, his hometown.
But in 1971, his family lost track of him, and no one knows how 10 years later he ended up murdered in a culvert near Beaver Creek.
"It's going to be hard for us to figure that out," Sheriff Verbrugge conceded.
That said, just solving the decades-old mystery of identifying the Rock County John Doe was worth it.
"Just to get the name for the family, I think is huge. You're always going to have questions on things like that. But our job is to try to get answers, and the cost is minimal," Sheriff Verbrugge said.
The DNA Doe Project is working on several other cases for Minnesota right now.
That includes:
- The body of a man found in the JJ Hill building in Saint Paul in 1985
- The body of a woman found in Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton in 2000
- A woman found dismembered in lakes in the East Metro back in 1993.
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