Man vanished before Thanksgiving 31 years ago in Alabama. His body was just identified
Days before Thanksgiving in 1991, the family of an 18-year-old watched as he hopped in a car and drove off with a friend in Alabama.
This was the last time anyone would see or hear from him — and for more than 30 years, no one knew what happened to him.
On April 22, the Heflin Police Department finally identified the remains of a body found in 1997 as the young man who went missing: Jerome Morris.
After ”the holidays came and went” and Morris’ family still hadn’t heard anything from him, they reported him missing, according to an April 27 news conference from the police department.
The search for Morris went on for years with no luck.
In August 1997, police said a landowner was surveying his property before building a new home when he came across what he thought were remains of a deer.
After a closer look, he realized they were human, according to police.
Authorities said the remains were found on the edge of the landowner’s property, bordering the Talladega National Forest, and they were partially covered by leaves and debris but “there appeared to be no attempt to bury them.”
Authorities attempted to test the remains for DNA at the time, but they were unsuccessful because they had been outside for several years.
The case went cold until 2020, when Ross McGlaughn became the new police chief and was determined to reopen old cold cases, according to Heflin Police.
The Jerome Morris case was one of them.
The police department said it collaborated with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, which prepared the remains and shipped them to a private laboratory in Canada.
On April 22, 2022, after help from the forensics lab and a local genealogist, authorities were finally able to identify the remains as Jerome Morris and notified his family.
“I know it comes as bittersweet news to them, but now we can actually work this as a homicide instead of a missing persons,” Capt. Scott Bonner said during a news conference.
While police wouldn’t give specifics to how Morris died, Bonner said investigators have evidence and potential witnesses that lead them to believe there was “no doubt it was a homicide.”
Authorities said they know of a potential motive for the killing and believe that the suspect in this case knew Morris.
“Some people out there know what happened,” Police Chief McGlaughn said in the conference, adding that they will now sift through information from the last three decades and determine what is “small town rumor mill” and what are factual leads.
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Man vanished before Thanksgiving 31 years ago in Alabama. His body was just identified."
