CANTON, Ohio — A major part of a Stark County mystery that dates back as far as 2017 has finally been solved after DNA was used to identify a "John Doe" investigators suspect was a murder victim.
During a news conference scheduled for Thursday morning at the Stark County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff George Maier and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost identified the man as Mike Leach.
A genetic genealogy team from the DNA Doe Project will also be on hand to answer questions.
Investigators and Stark County residents were baffled for years after the skeletal remains of a man were found by an oil well off Sandy Avenue SE in Pike Township in March of 2020.
“When a unknown person is identified, dignity is restored and there is a renewal of hope for justice,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said. “I commend the efforts of BCI and Sheriff Maier for restoring Michael Leach’s identity. Those who loved and knew him can now grieve their friend.”
His T-shirt and shoes were found at the scene without any identification or indication of how he died. Neighbors were left with a feeling of nervousness, including Cindy Natale.
"It changes everything when something like this happens in your neighborhood. You keep your kids in more. You watch everything they do," Natale told News 5 in 2021.
The John Doe case received renewed attention in 2021 after Samantha Molnar, a BCI forensic artist, released a clay facial reconstruction of what the man could look like.
"This is somebody's actual life. Their name was taken from them, and we want to do everything we can to try to give them their name back because nobody deserves to lose their name forever," Molnar said at the time.
In 2023, law enforcement also used the latest technology to release additional digitally-created images.
'It's a shock'
News that authorities had identified Leach after all of these years came as a surprise to Calvin White, the executive director of Friends of the Homeless, a shelter in New Philadelphia.
"It's a shock, but something like this is out of the ordinary, thank goodness for that," White said.
White knew Leach when he lived at the shelter for a few months in 2017.
"I remember him smiling a lot, and that's obviously a good indication that somebody's got some satisfaction," White said.
Authorities confirmed that Leach moved to a home in Dover after he left the shelter.
In August of 2017, a neighbor filed a police report worried that Mike "has not been seen in weeks."
Dover police responded to the home on East 3rd Street. In a report, the officer noted that the windows were open and a fan was on.
"No one is answering the door. No odor detected," the officer wrote.
Detectives believe someone murdered Leach, who was around the age of 61 at the time, and then left his body by the oil well.
"It's beyond just answering questions about what happened, but the whys that it happened," White said.
How the case broke
Investigators told News 5 that the big break in the case came after DNA from a bone was submitted to the DNA Doe Project.
A team used genetic genealogy and found a relative that ultimately led to the identification of Leach, sources said.
"Investigative Genetic Genealogy is the process of using DNA and genealogy to identify an unknown person through research into their DNA relatives," said Pam Lauritzen with the DNA Doe Project.
White said he was glad that Leach wasn't forgotten and that a team of investigators worked years to identify him.
"Science and the cooperation between agencies and systems is very important in this because no one place has the total story of anybody," White said.
Stark County Coroner Ronald Rusnak declined to comment on the case until the Thursday news conference.
Investigators said that while Leach's cause of death hasn't been revealed, the case is being handled as a homicide, and there is an ongoing effort to identify his killer or killers.
"Hopefully, in this case, there will be some accountability for what happened to Mike and there will be some closure to his story was— while his time here on Earth," White said.
