SEATTLE — The family of a man who went missing more than 35 years ago finally has answers about his disappearance.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday they identified the body of Mark L. Ashland, who died in Seattle's Carkeek Park in October 1984. Ashland was 30 years old when he died.
“The family is very grateful to finally know what happened to their missing loved one and to have the opportunity to formally grieve their loss,” Dr. Kathy Taylor, Washington state forensic anthropologist based out of the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, said in a Public Health – Seattle & King County blog post.
Ashland didn’t have any identification on him at the time of his death, and detectives weren’t able to identify him through other means, so he became a John Doe.
In fall 2019, a woman who was living out of state reached out to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, because a profile listed on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and the Doe Network resembled her uncle, who went missing in the early 1980s.
The medical examiner’s office couldn’t compare DNA samples to confirm Ashland’s identity, because there weren’t any samples available.
Instead, Taylor asked the family if they had saved any letters from the missing uncle, which may have fingerprints on them. Since Ashland was buried 35 years ago, Taylor said print comparison was the “best and most realistic” option for identification.
The family provided a letter the missing man wrote to his parents in 1981, which was processed by examiners with the King County Automated Fingerprint Identification System Unit, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office. Examiners lifted two faint latent fingerprints off the letter and compared them to prints taken from the man found in Carkeek Park. One print matched offering a positive ID.
“The King County Medical Examiner’s Office never gives up on identifying the unidentified,” Taylor said in a statement. “Every person deserves to have their name restored after death and every family of a missing person deserves to know what happened to their loved one.”