Police are digging up the remains of 8 unidentified homicide victims in a Northeast Philadelphia burial ground

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The unidentified remains of eight homicide victims buried in a Northeast Philadelphia potter’s field are at the center of a multi-agency operation this week aimed at identifying them.

Off of Dunks Ferry Road is a city-owned plot of land where unknown, unclaimed and indigent people have been buried. In a taped-off area, investigators from the Philadelphia Police Department, the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office and the FBI are working all week to exhume the remains and collect samples.

“Some of these remains have been in there for 20, 30 years, so there’s varying levels of remains, varying levels of their condition,” said Ryan Gallagher, assistant director of the Police Department’s Office of Forensic Science.

Gallagher explains, after collecting samples, the team will extract DNA and use genealogy to trace the deceased to a close relative. From there, investigators can investigate their identity and interview family members, with the hope of one day closing the investigation of what led to their death.

“Part of the reason to identify these people is because they are victims of homicides. So it furthers the investigation once we know the victim,” said Lt. Tom Walsh with the Police Department’s Homicide Division.

Walsh says another important outcome of the work is to bring closure to the victims' families.

“The relief on people’s faces when you can sit down in the living room and you can tell them, ‘Hey, this is your loved one that’s been missing for 30, 40 years,’” Walsh said. “Of course, it’s tragic the way it ended, but the relief is there, that they finally know: This is my loved one, and this is where they’re at.”

Investigators said the youngest victim, buried in 1962, was between 4 and 6 years old, and the oldest victim was around 50 or 60 years old.

The forensic techniques used for cases such as these were also used in the identification, in 2022, of Joseph Zarelli, previously known as “The Boy in the Box,” a 4-year-old boy whose bruised and scarred body was found in 1957. He was initially buried in the Dunks Ferry Road potter's field.

There are as many as 500 people buried at the Dunks Ferry Road potter's field. A similar operation done there in 2018, which led to the identification of seven people, was featured in an episode of the KYW Newsradio original podcast Gone Cold.

In 2022, KYW reported on an effort of the Philadelphia Police Department, Medical Examiner's Office and District Attorney's Office, to go through more than 200 files of unidentified remains. The work could take decades.