Buried Without a Name: Two John Does, Two Forgotten Lives, and the Decades-Long Search for the Truth
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
Two unidentified young men entered anonymous graves in the 1970s. One was finally identified after 42 years, while the other remains one of Florida’s most haunting forgotten John Doe mysteries.
The Boy Buried in Texas
On July 31, 1973, Mary Raskin saw her 17-year-old son, Joseph “Joey” Norman Spears, for what would become the last time.
Joey had escaped from the Harrison County Youth Detention Center in Mississippi. After that day, he disappeared without a trace. His family searched for answers, but the years slipped by without a phone call, a letter, or a confirmed sighting. It seemed as though the earth had swallowed him whole.
In a tragic sense, it had.
Less than a month later, on August 23, 1973, a young man attempted to cross the Gulf Freeway in Texas City, Texas. A vehicle struck and killed him before anyone could learn his identity.
The teenager carried no identification. He wore only a pair of blue jeans and no shirt.
The Galveston County medical examiner estimated his age at 17 to 18 years old. He had shoulder-length dark hair, blue eyes, a mustache, a goatee, and a distinctive circular scar on one wrist.
Investigators had little to work with.
On September 21, 1973, local newspapers published a short article describing the unidentified victim and warned that authorities would bury him within two weeks if no one claimed him. The article included a retouched photograph of the young man in hopes that someone would recognize him.
No one did.
The Texas City community refused to let him disappear without dignity. Residents donated a funeral service, a casket, and a burial plot at Hayes Grace Memorial Park in Hitchcock, Texas.
The young man entered the ground as John Doe.
For more than four decades, no one visited his grave knowing his real name. Everything changed because one cemetery employee refused to let the mystery die.
Chelsea Davidson, an employee at Hayes Grace Memorial Park, began researching unidentified burials. She combed through missing-person databases for possible matches. Still, she found nothing until she discovered a National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) entry created in 2013 by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department.
A family member had contacted investigators seeking an update on Joey Spears’ disappearance, prompting deputies to enter his information into the national database.
The similarities proved impossible to ignore. Joey’s age matched. His appearance matched. Most importantly, the unusual scar on his wrist matched the unidentified teenager buried in Texas.
Davidson contacted Harrison County Sheriff’s investigator Kristi Johnson, who reopened the decades-old mystery.
In February 2016, authorities exhumed the body, hoping modern DNA testing would finally identify the young man.
Ironically, the sealed burial vault had preserved the remains so well that forensic experts struggled to recover a usable DNA profile.
Unable to rely on genetics, investigators from Texas and Mississippi painstakingly compared every available detail.
Finally, they turned to the person who knew Joey best. Mary Raskin examined photographs taken during her son’s 1973 autopsy. She confirmed what no mother ever wants to discover.
After more than 42 years, Joey Spears had finally come home.
Joey grew up in a military family that relocated frequently as his father served in the U.S. Navy. His disappearance had haunted his family for decades.
On August 19, 2016, authorities released his remains to a Texas funeral home, which cremated them and returned the ashes to his family in California.
His name no longer rested beneath a stone marked “Unknown.”
The Forgotten John Doe of Keystone Point
Just months after Joey Spears lost his life, another unidentified young man appeared hundreds of miles away under equally mysterious circumstances.
In February 1974, 75-year-old Louis Severson decided to spend a quiet morning fishing along a canal off Biscayne Bay Drive in Keystone Point, North Miami.
While preparing his line, something unusual caught his eye about 150 feet from the roadway.
At first, he assumed it was a discarded mannequin. Hours passed without a single fish. Curiosity finally won. When Severson walked closer, he realized the figure lying face down in the grass was a dead man.
Unable to locate a police officer, he drove around the neighborhood before stopping at a nearby construction site, where he asked Dan Villella and Larry Gordon to accompany him back to the canal.
The two men confirmed his worst fears. The victim had no pulse, and rigor mortis had only recently begun.
Investigators found the body lying three feet from a line of pine trees near a dirt road leading toward the canal.
The medical examiner described the victim as a white male between 18 and 25 years old, approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing about 137 pounds. He carried only 70 cents.
Nearby lay a blank piece of paper.
One clue immediately caught investigators’ attention. The lividity did not match the body’s final position. Medical examiner investigators concluded someone had moved the victim after death and dumped him where he was eventually discovered.
The secluded cul-de-sac provided easy access by automobile, but investigators also believed someone could have transported the body by boat under the cover of darkness.
The Eisenbergs, who lived at 13355 Biscayne Bay Dr., right next to where the body was found, had not seen the man’s body only a few feet from their home.
The autopsy revealed multiple faint needle marks on both arms containing traces of barbiturates. Toxicology identified opiates and morphine, indicating heroin use.
At first glance, investigators considered an overdose. Yet several details raised questions.
His clothing was expensive and clean. “He wore a new tie-dyed, long-sleeved shirt, blue, seven buttons down the front, two buttons on the cuffs. The label was ‘Hutspah’. The undershirt, small, dark brown, heavy rib, was ‘909 Collection’. The denim dungarees with flare bottoms had no hems, front pockets only, and a purple label, ‘Live Ins’. There were no undershorts. The belt was 1 1/2 inches wide, soft dark leather, about size 34. The shoes were a soft moccasin-type buckskin, lace up to the shins. Size 8. U. S. patent 3.946.069. There was a 3-inch fringe at the top.”
His teeth showed excellent dental care. His brown hair reached his shoulders with subtle blond highlights, and he wore a thick mustache. A massive 10½-inch diagonal scar stretched across his abdomen. Surgeons had previously removed his spleen, although his appendix remained intact, suggesting he had survived a serious accident earlier in life.
The medical examiner concluded this victim likely came from a family with financial means.
Authorities submitted his fingerprints to the FBI. No match. A nationwide BOLO produced nothing. Interpol also searched its files. Still nothing. Despite the abundance of information provided not only about his physical appearance, but his clothing as well, no one came forward to claim him. But whoever left him there on the lawn in Keystone Heights knew who he was.
Students at the Miami-Dade College embalming program prepared the young man’s body before returning him to the medical examiner.
With no family to claim him and no name to place upon his grave, officials buried him in Potter’s Field.
Unlike Joey Spears, no determined relative, investigator, or volunteer has yet uncovered his identity.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the case involves what happened afterward.
Today, there appears to be no official record of the investigation identified as Case 74-393. Neither the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s records nor the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System currently reference the unidentified victim. Aside from a handful of newspaper articles published in March 1974, the trail disappears.
The young man once described as looking “like he wandered off the set of Jesus Christ Superstar” remains nameless.
Two Graves. Two Very Different Endings.
Joey Spears eventually regained his identity because a cemetery employee refused to let an old mystery remain buried.
The young man found in Keystone Point has received no such breakthrough.
One family finally received answers after 42 years.
Another family may still have no idea their son, brother, or friend vanished into a forgotten grave more than half a century ago.
Cold cases often fade from headlines, but they never truly disappear.
Sometimes all it takes is one determined person, one overlooked clue, or one forgotten file to restore a victim’s name.
Until then, countless John Does continue waiting in silence, hoping someone, somewhere, still remembers them.