Connecticut Police Dig Up Wrong Body Trying To Solve Old Murder Case

Police who were trying to make progress on a murder case that’s nearly half a century old, but only succeeded in digging up the wrong body from an abandoned Hamden, Connecticut graveyard.

They were attempting to learn the identity of the murder victim, who is still just classified as a Jane Doe after her body was found strangled in 1975. Police say they realized the mistake when they dug up the body and realized it was a male.

The victim’s gravesite was unfortunately unmarked, so police now have a very difficult job ahead of them in terms of how they can track down the proper grave and not exhume another wrong body.

They will be attempting a visit to the graveyard again in two weeks, according to East Haven Police Chief Joseph Murgo. “What we’re finding is that there are a large amount of unmarked graves and there are a large amount of people who weren’t necessarily documented on our records, buried in our area,” Murgo told WFSB.

Murgo said he hopes to be able to locate the body and make more progress with advanced DNA testing, because “forty-seven years is a long time to wonder what happened to your loved one and there is somebody out there that wants some sense of closure and it’s our hope that we’re able to bring that sense of closure to our victim’s family.”