New DNA testing has closed a 40-year-old cold case in northeast Iowa.
Investigators have identified the remains of a body that was discovered in 1986 in a hay barn north of Decorah.
The initial investigation went cold and the body was buried, but decades later, Winneshiek County Sheriff’s Deputy Cole Tweten says he started looking into the case.
“Basically every lead that we had established had been followed up on,” Tweten says, “and essentially the only thing that was going to get us any resolution in the case was DNA.”
Accessing that DNA involved exhuming the body and conducting tests through the state Medical Examiner’s Office. Investigators found a match with an Ohio family which has searched for its missing relation, Clifton Womack, who disappeared in 1985.
Tweten says the case has nagged at him for years.
“As I grew up here, I always knew the exact hay shed that he had been found in, and knew of the case,” he says.
The cause of death is undetermined. Womack’s body will be transported to a final resting place in Ohio.
The effort was funded by the Evansdale-based Elizabeth Collins Foundation, which supports families affected by missing person cases.
(By Gavin McGough, Iowa Public Radio)