Body found floating near Florida bridge ID’ed as Virginia man 3 decades later

“We are happy that we are able to provide the family some answers and some closure as to what happened with their loved one,” Michael Walek, deputy chief for Clearwater police, said in a statement.

After being called “Pinellas County John Doe 1993” for the past 31 years, a man whose body was found floating near a bridge in Florida has been identified, police said.

The Clearwater Police Department announced on Monday, June 2, that the deceased man who was discovered near the Clearwater Pass bridge on Nov. 29, 1993, is Edman Eric Gleed, who was 84 at the time of his death and reported missing by his son in Fairfax County, Virginia.

When Gleed’s body was initially found near the east side of the bridge leading to Sand Key, a neatly folded pile of clothing was discovered on the shoreline near a lifeguard stand on Clearwater Beach, police said, adding that an ID was not found on the clothing or with the body.

At the time, an autopsy of Gleed’s body was inconclusive; thus, the manner and cause of death weren’t determined, but foul play was not suspected, police said. The medical examiner’s office did find that the victim was a white male between the ages of 60 and 80, 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed 118 pounds, with short gray hair and blue eyes, according to the department.

How was Edman Gleed identified?

To identify the remains, more than three decades later, Clearwater police detectives worked with the medical examiner’s office and Moxxy Forensic Investigations, a nonprofit that provides investigative genetic genealogy services to law enforcement. Additional samples of Gleed’s DNA were submitted for testing in concert with investigative genetic genealogy, police said.

Kaycee Connelly, the Moxxy team lead for the case, said they found DNA matches that were “either living in or recent immigrants from England, which was quite unexpected for a person found in Pinellas County, Florida.”

“Our team of volunteer genealogists uncovered numerous ancestors from various parts of England, stretching back to the mid-1700s, to connect the DNA matches with one another,” Connelly said. “Because of recent immigration and the estimated age range of the man at the time of his death, we were looking for very distant connections.”

The Moxxy team did eventually find a possible identity for the man, but to confirm, they found his next of kin, who happened to be his son, and collected a buccal swab, police said. The swab was compared to the profile of the unidentified man, which determined the two had a parent-child relationship, according to the department.

‘We are happy that we are able to provide the family some answers’

Once the relationship was established, police officially identified the body as belonging to Gleed. Police spoke with the man’s son, who is 94 and lives in North Carolina, on Monday, June 2.

“We are happy that we are able to provide the family some answers and some closure as to what happened with their loved one,” Michael Walek, deputy chief for Clearwater police, said in a statement.

Ed Adams, the Moxxy team assistant for the case, said this situation has “been close to the hearts of everyone on the team.”

“We are all honored to have played a part in returning Edman Gleed to his family,” Adams added.