GREENBELT, Md. — The DNA Doe Project has identified a man whose remains were found along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Greenbelt back in 1981. Forty-five years later, the man was identified as 24-year-old Edward “Eddie” Octavis Devone.
Devone, a native of Baltimore, was last seen by his family in the late 1970s.
U.S. Park Police detectives found Devone’s body wrapped in a blanket alongside a guardrail on Aug. 3, 1981. Investigators determined that he was 15-25 years old, about 5-foot-2 and weighed 106 pounds. The young man also had distinctive, severely deformed teeth with unusual lengths, odd angles, and gaps. His cause of death could not be determined.
Despite the continued efforts of the U.S. Park Police, the man’s identity remained unknown. In October 2024, after all traditional methods of human identification proved unsuccessful, the U.S. Park Police requested assistance from the DNA Doe Project, whose expert investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify John and Jane Does.
The unidentified man’s DNA matches indicated he had roots in North Carolina, and it wasn’t long before the team on the case homed in on a family from the Fayetteville area. “We identified a couple from North Carolina as great grandparents of the unidentified man, so we knew that one of their children had to be his grandparent,” said team leader Matthew Waterfield. “But when we couldn’t find him among their descendants, we realized that something didn’t add up — it was like a branch of their family was missing.”
USPP detectives went to Fayetteville and met family members there, where they learned a key piece of information. In the 1920s, a young girl was adopted out of the family. While she remained somewhat in contact with her biological relatives, she didn’t stay in North Carolina — she moved to Baltimore.
Detectives and the team from DNA Doe Project zeroed in on the new branch of the family, eventually learning that the woman who moved to Baltimore had a grandson called Eddie Devone, born in 1956. When investigators spoke with Devone’s siblings, they discovered that he hadn’t been seen in nearly 50 years.
The family provided a photo of him as a young child, which is the only photo they still had of him. Further DNA testing ensued and, in December 2025, investigators confirmed that the man formerly known as Greenbelt John Doe was in fact Eddie Devone.
“Eddie’s story is heartbreaking, but it has been an honor to assist his family in finding answers,” said team co-leader Rhonda Kevorkian. “We were lucky to work with a law enforcement agency that went above and beyond to resolve this case.”
To learn more about the DNA Doe Project, click here.
