UPDATE, 11:30 p.m.:
After nearly 40 years, a Macon cold case can finally call itself closed.
The Macon District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday that the remains of a teenage "John Doe" was identified as a missing 15-year old boy from Michigan.
Andrew Greer ran away from his home in Michigan in 1979. He hitchhiked his way to Macon before he was struck by a semi-truck along the side of I-75, according to a release from the Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office.
Greer was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Evergreen Cemetery. Anthony Strickland, then a 29-year-old patrol cop for the Bibb County Sheriff's Office, was called to attend the funeral service for Greer's unidentified remains.
"It stuck with me, I knew he was here. No name, no marker," Strickland said.
Strickland tried to find a match to the remains throughout the 80's and 90's. He eventually retired from the force in 2000, but continued to search. It wasn't until December 2017 that Strickland noticed a missing person's report on a website and matched the dates to that of the John Doe's death.
"It was him. I knew it. It had to be," Strickland said. "I just prayed that the Lord would let me find him and send him home. Somebody had to love him and care about him."
Strickland contacted Michigan State Police about his finding. MSP then contacted the Macon District Attorney's Office. The organizations worked together with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the GBI, and Bibb County Sheriff's Office to get the body exhumed.
Macon Assistant District Attorney John Regan helped coordinate the effort to have the body pulled from the dirt. The remains were found inside a body bag and still able to be identified. They were sent to the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas and confirmed to be Greer's.
"We found out that it was a 1 in 1.9 trillion that it wasn't Andrew Greer and since there are only seven billion people on the Earth, we are very confident we have found Andrew Greer," Regan said. "It's a great relief that we're able to put a closure on this case for the Greer family."
Greer's parents had passed away, but other family members remain in Michigan. Arrangements are being made to return the remains to the family.
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On February 12, 1979, a 15-year-old Michigan boy ran away from his Clayton home, never to be seen again.
His mother called to report her son missing around dinner time, police arrived half an hour later at their home, and an hour later they cleared the scene.
The last time anyone saw him, he was leaving Addison High School – about 15 miles away from his house – in a blue quilted parka and white high tops.
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Two days later – on Valentine’s Day -- an unknown teen was hit and killed by a semi-truck while hitchhiking down I-75 near Macon.
For almost four decades, the remains were known to investigators as ‘John Doe’ and the case went cold.
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Thanks to advancements in DNA technology, the case has thawed.
Investigators have closed a decades-old missing persons case and identified the remains as being one in the same – Andrew Jackson Greer (Bowman) II.
A news release from Michigan State Police issued on Tuesday connected the two after a forensic analyst from the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas confirmed the DNA of Greer and ‘John Doe’ were identical.
A retired Bibb deputy made the connection between the two in Dec. 2017 and notified Michigan State Police, who traveled to Macon in April to exhume the body from its pauper’s grave.
DNA from the remains was taken by the GBI and sent to the center in Texas where results showed the DNA was 1.9 trillion times more likely to be Greer’s than not.
Greer’s body will be returned home to Michigan, according to the release.