Description
On May 6, 2018 the body of a man in his 50’s to 60’s was found floating in Lake Washington off the shore on the south end of Mercer Island, Washington. The deceased wore only black socks. An autopsy conducted by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office established the man to be approx. 5′ 4″ tall and weighing approx. 120 pounds. The deceased was possibly of Asian descent. Authorities were unable to determine how long the man had been deceased, but believe it could have been a number of weeks. Cause of death was drowning and the manner was undetermined.
NamUs ID: UP67766
Date Body Found: May 6, 2018
Race: Uncertain
Sex: Male
Estimated Age: 50-60
Estimated PMI: Weeks
Location: Mercer Island, WA
Agency of Jurisdiction
Mercer Island Police Department
Jim Robarge, Detective Sergeant
206-275-7925
Links to More Information
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/67766/
https://unidentified.wikia.org/wiki/King_County_John_Doe_(May_2018)
Photo Credit: Natalie Murry
A man found in Lake Washington in May, 2018 wearing only socks has been identified as Angel Arroyo Hernandez, aged 53, who had been estranged from his family for some time before his death.
Investigators with the Mercer Island Police Department worked on the case without any success until mid-2021, when they reached out to the DNA Doe Project to try investigative genetic genealogy. A blood sample taken from the body at the time he was discovered was analyzed and processed to create a DNA profile that was uploaded to the public databases at GEDmatch Pro and FTDNA.com. The profile had thousands of matches in the databases, but none were close relatives. Volunteer investigative genetic genealogists then began to build family trees with the closest matches, looking for common ancestors that would help them narrow the vast tree to the correct branch.
Initially, investigators believed that this John Doe was of Asian descent, but it quickly became apparent to the genealogists that he was actually Hispanic, with many ancestors who were from Mexico and the Southwest US. Combing through historical records hand-written in Spanish, they traced his family across 11 generations through more than 200 years to find Mr Hernandez.
“This case is a good example of why cases of unidentified Hispanic and Indigenous people are so challenging,” said DNA Doe Project team leader Rebecca Somerhalder. “Even though it seems like a lot of matches, when they are all so distant to the Doe, we have a lot of work to do with limited access to records in Central and South American countries to work with.”
“I find that there is often a lot of interesting information we can get from the small matches and the patterns between them,” said team leader Trish Hurturbise. “In this case we were able to locate a close relative to Mr Hernandez by exploring matches of his matches.”
The DNA Doe Project wishes to acknowledge the contributions of the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Mercer Island Police Department, who entrusted the case to the DNA Doe Project; HudsonAlpha Discovery for DNA extraction from blood and whole genome sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FTDNA for providing their databases; the generous donor who funded this case; and DDP’s dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring victims home.
Doe-Nate Fund Goal: $2000
Thanks to a very generous donation, this case is fully funded.
Last Updated: February 16, 2024
