How bones that washed up on New Jersey beaches were identified as a 19th-century ship captain

The bones of a long-dead man began washing up on New Jersey beaches three decades ago, but it was only in late May that the world finally learned their owner’s identity.

Henry Goodsell was the captain of a schooner known as the Oriental when it wrecked off the coast of Brigantine in December 1844. The ship was on a journey from Connecticut to Philadelphia with 60 tons of marble slated to be used in the construction of Girard College, but it began to leak about a mile off the shore of Brigantine Shoal. That leak sealed the fate of all five crew members on board — Goodsell included.

Now, more than 180 years later, we know of the doomed captain’s fate thanks in large part to the work of students and instructors at a New Jersey college. Founded in 2022, the Mahwah-based Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College specializes in training students in an increasingly utilized, DNA-based investigative technology that harnesses data from commercial genetic testing to help identify the previously unidentifiable.

Also known as forensic genetic genealogy, that technology serves as a tool for law enforcement to find killers and victims through distant relatives. It became widely known in 2018, when investigative genetic genealogy led to the identification of the Golden State Killer in California. The technique has been used locally in Philadelphia in high-profile cases like the “Boy in the Box” and the Fairmount Park rapist.

“I sometimes jokingly say it’s the same way that law enforcement uses psychics, except we’re really good psychics,” said David Gurney, director of the Ramapo Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center. “They’re contacting us because we’re able to give leads based on scientific and paper records, and they can trust that it’s likely going to point them in the right direction.”

Typically, investigative genetic genealogy is tapped when DNA evidence collected from crime scenes fails to produce matches in national crime databases. But with the help of places like Ramapo’s center, which has consulted on nearly 100 cases pro bono, authorities are often able to home in on a suspect’s, or a suspected victim’s, identity in cases that otherwise would appear to have hit a dead end.

Here’s a look into how investigative genetic genealogy helps identify suspects and unknown remains, and how Goodsell’s case came together.

Investigative genetic genealogy essentially combines traditional genealogical research, like combing public records such as birth and immigration documents, with genetic genealogical information, which anyone who has taken an at-home DNA test might be familiar with. Members of the public are able to take those DNA tests and upload the results to databases such as GEDMatch and FamilyTreeDNA, which allow users to opt in to let law enforcement access their information.

Traditional DNA testing is limited in which relatives of a suspect or victim it can identify because it looks at relatively little genetic information, said Cairenn Binder, assistant director of the Ramapo center. But the type of DNA testing used for these commercial genetic genealogy databases is much more expansive, and can identify more distant relatives, such as fifth cousins. As a result, genetic genealogists are able to “reverse engineer” an unidentified person’s family tree to zero in on his or her identity, she added.

“It’s like an old Samsung flip phone photo that you took in 2006 vs. a high-definition photo that you just took on your iPhone,” Binder said. “We’re looking at so much more detail that it allows us to see those further-out relatives.”

If a genetic match for a DNA sample is found in a database, researchers can build out the subject’s family tree to find common ancestors. That is where the traditional genealogical research aspect comes in, in which researchers assemble a family tree using documents like birth, death, and immigration records.

A subject’s direct DNA data do not even need to be present in a database. Gurney estimates that investigative genetic genealogists have access to 3 million DNA profiles in available databases — just a small fraction of the U.S. population — but the technology has contributed to solving nearly 2,000 cases since 2018, he said.

Goodsell’s case started in 1995, when what investigators would later identify as his skull washed up on a beach in Longport, Atlantic County. More of his bones came ashore in neighboring Margate in 1999, and more were discovered in Ocean City, Cape May County, in 2013. Because the remains were so widespread, he became known as “Scattered Man John Doe” as New Jersey State Police investigated the case.

In 2023, state police partnered with Ramapo’s center to identify the remains. Previous genetic testing found that all the discovered bones were from the same person, but investigators initially believed they belonged to someone who had gone missing in the 1980s or early 1990s. After a deeper look at the DNA and related genetic ancestors, however, students at the center began to believe they were much, much older.

“All of the common ancestors were from the 1600s in Connecticut, so that started to throw up red flags for us,” Binder said. “This case is a little weird.”

The key, it turned out, was the gold fillings in the skull’s teeth. Researchers began looking for historical context on gold fillings and found they were not uncommon back in the 1800s — at least among seafaring people like sailors and ship captains like Goodsell. The next move was looking into recorded shipwrecks from that time.

Ultimately, researchers matched a man who had died in a shipwreck off New Jersey’s coast in 1844 to relatives they had seen in databases. That man was Goodsell, and after more than a year of research, students passed on their hunch to state police, who collected a genetic sample from one of the captain’s great-great-grandchildren in March.

It confirmed Goodsell’s identity, solving what is considered to be one of the oldest cold cases resolved using investigative genetic genealogy. In Binder’s estimation, it might actually be the oldest.

The second-oldest case solved using the technology that Binder said she is aware of involves a pre-Civil War John Doe who died in 1852. Investigative genetic genealogists helped identify that man as Richard Bunts (or Bunce, depending on the source) in 2021.

While investigative genetic genealogy’s role in solving Goodsell’s case is remarkable, Gurney and Binder stressed that the technology is useful in more than cold cases. In recent years, it has also been utilized in active ones, such as that of Bryan Kohberger, the Pennsylvania man who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students.

In Kohberger’s case, genetic material from a leather knife sheath at the homicide scene in Idaho was compared to DNA found on trash at his parents’ home in Monroe County. According to a 2023 affidavit, investigators found that the DNA in Pennsylvania was that of a male who almost certainly was Kohberger’s father.

Gurney noted the technology also can be used to exonerate wrongly convicted people, though that use is rare. Only four people are known to have been exonerated using investigative genetic genealogy — two of whom were freed with help from Ramapo’s center.

David and Robert Bintz, who served nearly a quarter century in a Wisconsin prison for a murder they did not commit, were released last year after Ramapo researchers found that another man was the actual culprit. Students, Gurney said, were able to provide the real murderer’s identity after two days of research. DNA available at the time of the trial, he added, did not match either of the Bintz brothers, but they were convicted anyway based on circumstantial evidence.

“It’s just an incredible case, and all around very sad and very tragic,” Gurney said. “But also very hopeful in the sense that it shows the power of IGG.”

Despite the successes, investigative genetic genealogy has major limitations, Binder said.

Chief among them is current DNA analysis technology, which is limited by the quality of genetic material that investigators gather. Those samples, depending on their age or condition, can be hampered by contamination from bacteria or other individuals. Those factors are hard for investigators to overcome, though that could change as the technology sharpens, Binder noted.

The databases researchers use to identify possible suspects or victims also have limitations. The genetic profiles available to investigators are mostly those of white Western Europeans, which makes identifying people outside that group more difficult, Binder said.

“Until the databases become more diverse and have more people in them, you’re mostly going to be identifying Caucasian individuals,” Binder said.

Likewise, some critics say the use of such genetic databases raises Fourth Amendment concerns, or could violate the database users’ privacy, despite users having to opt into law enforcement-based usage, Gurney said.

“This field does depend entirely on members of the public making that choice,” Gurney said.