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HOUSTON (AP) - The fully clothed corpse lay face down, floating in a swirl of water where the south bank of Buffalo Bayou runs through downtown Houston. The year was 1957 and the young man's body was deemed too decomposed for an autopsy. He received a pauper's burial in unmarked Grave 5 in a county-owned cemetery. Two years later, the now-defunct Houston Press newspaper published a story headlined "Who Is The Man In Grave 5 In Potter's Field?"
Now, there is more hope the man can still be identified thanks to a federal grant and investigators with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. A series of grants from the National Institute of Justice allows medical examiners and coroners around the country to submit — or resubmit — remains, tissue and fingerprints for identification and determine causes of death.
Mary Daniels, director of operations for Harris County's medical examiner's office, has 421 cases in which human remains are in need of identification.
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