New York widow thanks Rosemount residents, officials for bringing closure in 2014 cold case

John Doe was laid to rest five summers ago, but the search for his identity never died.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office on Wednesday gave a name and face to the man found dead in a Rosemount railroad shed in September 2014: James Raymond Everett, 48, of Cohocton, N.Y. Everett's widow, Patricia, traveled to Minnesota to meet the strangers who helped bring her closure and held the quiet, somber funeral for her husband in 2017.

"We are incredibly grateful that he was not alone," she said in a statement. "We were always on the lookout for him ... and frequently did a lot of online searching for any indication of activity or other clues as to his whereabouts."

Dedicated Rosemount investigators and medical examiners caught a break from the DNA of distant family members who submitted it to genealogy research. That advancement in technology made it possible to solve the cold case.

But there are some questions for which Patricia Everett and others will never have answers.

Though there is now an official Minnesota death certificate, the cause and manner of his death are undetermined, said chief medical examiner Andrew Baker.

"I'm afraid we'll just never know the answer to that," he said.

As for what James Everett was doing in Rosemount, that also remains unknown.

Patricia Everett said her husband was scheduled to go on a work trip in September 2013, but she later found out that he didn't go. Instead, "for unknown reasons, he left home leaving keys in the mailbox and never returned."

He was reported missing. But after a Montana State Trooper found him a few weeks later at a rest stop, the missing person's report was closed.

"He indicated to the trooper that he had problems at work and had quit and was just driving," his widow said. "I thought he may have reinvented his life and was living elsewhere, until I was visited by a police officer at my home inquiring about Jim."

On Sep. 29, 2014, an electrical worker for the Union Pacific Rail line was remodeling a utility shed and called police to report human remains. Rosemount Police Chief Mikael Dahlstrom said officers initially couldn't open the door because it was held shut in some fashion. But once inside, they discovered the body of a white man living in what appeared to be a makeshift shelter with bedding, food, water and receipts from a local gas station dated from the fall of 2013.

What they didn't find was a wallet or any form of identification. Dahlstrom said that because the shelter was secured from the inside, most elements of criminal intent were ruled out. Officials said they believed Everett likely died of natural causes a year earlier.

Baker said the autopsy showed that Everett was dressed warmly in layers. He had a left earring, eyeglasses, leather jacket, boots stuffed with newspapers and long brown and gray hair. His DNA profile was uploaded to national database and, in 2015, the FBI did a facial reconstruction.

"That's as far as we got using all the tools we had at our disposal some seven years ago," Baker said, adding that his office took interest in the case because of "the rarity of such an occurrence."

In the Upper Midwest, he said, it's exceedingly uncommon to bury someone truly unidentified.

Shawn Wilson, the medical examiner's office administrator, said typically fingerprints, dental records, medical X-rays, and sometimes a serial number from an implanted medical device are used to determine an identity.

"Very rarely is DNA employed," he said.

Roughly 125 people have remained unidentified and are still cold cases since the office opened in 1964. Before Everett's case, there have been only two unidentified people buried since 2003.

The office ruled out 570 potential identities before burying Everett. Then 17 months later, they were solicited to submit tissue samples to a specialized lab. In September 2019, the first potential relatives were identified. The office and Rosemount police formed a task force to find relatives to submit DNA. But the case stalled again in November 2021.

The FBI referred the task force to the nonprofit DNA Doe Project, and by March 2022, genealogists identified four common ancestors, two maternal and two paternal.

"The name James Everett was presented as a potential lead," Wilson said.

Everett's father provided a DNA sample, and the Minnesota BCA confirmed the match.

"We all had questions, but we could not begin to tell his story until we knew his name. But the story of James Raymond Everett is not ours to tell," Wilson said. "It is his family's and they now have an ending."

In a statement, Patricia Everett shared what her husband was like: a true computer geek since high school "to the point of training the teacher for our school's first computer class offered in 1984 with the arrival of Apple computers."

He worked in short order and fine dining throughout Rochester, N.Y., as an accomplished cook and baker, particularly cakes for weddings, baby showers and birthdays. "His creations were always elaborate and well-engineered," she wrote.

He was a self-taught acoustic guitar player and had an amazing voice.

"Never a time goes by when I hear 'We've Got Tonight' by Bob Seger that I don't immediately think of Jim, as that was the song he sang and played for me at our wedding reception," she wrote. "He had everyone in tears by the time he was finished."

She thanked officials, investigators, media and Rosemount residents "for your concern and compassion, your willingness to support and be there for a complete stranger."

"Although this has not been the expected nor desired outcome in our search for him," she said, "we are all grateful and blessed to at least have this opportunity for closure, which many are not as fortunate to get. My heart truly goes out to those folks.

"Thank you for caring about Jim. For those who are missing a loved one, I hope this story provides hope that your loved one may also be found."

Wilson said the case was solved because a distant family member was researching their ancestry.

"Open source DNA and forensic genealogy could help others get similar closure, too," he said.