Does this story sound familiar to you? Do you recognize the person in these images? Investigators are asking for help.
Six years ago today, police officers in rural England discovered something worrying.
While searching an abandoned, overgrown barn in Hampshire as part of another investigation, they came across a body.
What remained was “basically a skeleton”, Douglas Utting, responsible for serious crimes, told Euronews, estimating that the person had been dead for several years.
The body was that of a Caucasian man in his fifties, between 1m77 and 1m80 tall, with brown hair.
In addition to tobacco and cigarette papers, his remains were surrounded by clothing, including a hat and glasses, a detective novel and objects suggesting that he “was living rough or on some kind of trip”explains Douglas Utting.
Other than that, there are no other clues.
Officers found no passport, driving license or other identifying items at the abandoned Micheldever dairy farm in southern England where his body was discovered.
Nor were there any other signs, such as a tattoo or jewelry, that could have “shorten the list of this person’s identity”says Douglas Utting.
Even the cause of his death remains a mystery.
Here again, there was no “no obvious trauma, no weapons, no clear signs of suicide, as is often the case in these kinds of cases”the serious crimes officer said, although investigators now believe the man probably died of natural causes.
Hampshire Police then turned to science, taking DNA samples from his toothbrush and teeth.
But they still haven’t found anything. They were unable to match his DNA to anyone in the UK’s criminal database or missing persons unit.
Ultimately, they put out a call to the media, asking anthropologist, Chris Rynn, to make a facial reconstruction from his skull, which was released to national newspapers in 2019.
That’s when the story took an unexpected turn.
Witnesses came forward in Itchen Stoke, a nearby village, and told Hampshire Police that the man had knocked on their door in 2012 and asked if he could pitch a tent in their field because he was lost. They accepted.
He was “quite disheveled” and spoke “good English, but with a strong French accent”the witnesses reported to the officers.
That evening, they shared a meal and talked with him, although, given the passage of time, they do not quite remember what he said to them.
Unable to remember his name, they recall him saying he was from France and had served in the army as a conscript, suffering from an injury that left him partially deaf .
ADVERTISEMENTOne of the witnesses, himself a former soldier, claimed that the man had a “military look”particularly in the way he organized his affairs.
The unknown man also told witnesses that he had worked for the famous French actress, Catherine Deneuve, although his agency was unable to verify this when Hampshire Police questioned him.
The exact reason for its presence in southern England is unclear.
Claiming to have arrived recently, the alleged Frenchman told witnesses he was traveling across the country to Ireland to meet his girlfriend.
Douglas Utting confides that “all options are open”.
ADVERTISEMENTWitnesses said he could have suffered from “mental illness”but the officer in charge of serious crimes reacted by saying that it was “from a simple opinion”.
“Was he on the run? He could have been, of course, if he was a criminal and ended up in someone’s DNA database we probably would have known by now. .. But who knows? That’s part of the mystery of this story.”he adds.
The next morning, the man bade the couple farewell – reluctantly accepting their offer of food and money – and walked away down the country lane “never to be seen again”says Douglas Utting.
Armed with these new leads, Hampshire Police once again turned to science to try to uncover further clues. She worked with researchers led by Dr Stuart Black from the University of Reading, who used isotope analysis of her teeth to determine exactly where the man had come from.
Comparing this analysis to a “fingerprint”, Dr Stuart Black explained to Euronews that tooth enamel is formed during childhood and that chemicals in the food and water we consume print there, thus indicating the place where a person was raised.
ADVERTISEMENTDr Stuart Black’s analysis revealed that the man had probably spent the first 12 years of his life in a “big city” located somewhere in “a fairly large area from the south-east of France and Corsica to the extreme west of Switzerland”. His diet was also rich in fish.
“Sad to think that someone died alone in a cold, dirty barn”
Hampshire Police passed the information on to French authorities and Locate, a voluntary organization which deals with unsolved missing persons cases. But their investigation has since reached an impasse.
She is now asking the public for help.
“The aim of our appeal is to send a message to the population of France, French-speaking Switzerland and Corsica… (and) to ask the question: does this (story) mean something to someone ?Does this image remind you of someone you haven’t seen since 2012? explains Douglas Utting, of Hampshire Police.
He is urging anyone to come forward with information in what he said is the latest attempt by police.
ADVERTISEMENT“There’s not much more we can do. Asking people in France and Switzerland if they can help us is really our last chance to try to put a name to this man and allow a family to whom he could fail to turn the page… someone, somewhere, must surely have (information)”.
“It is quite sad to think that someone died in these circumstances, alone, in a cold, dirty barn, probably in winter, and was not found for five years and was not been buried”confides Douglas Utting.
Anyone outside the UK who believes they may have information about this case can contact Locate International anonymously by emailing [email protected].
In the UK, call 101 and ask to be put in touch with Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary, quoting reference number 44170467777.
Interested persons can also submit information on the Locate International website: https://www.hampshire.police.uk/tua/tell-us-about/cor/tell-us-about-existing-case- report/.
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