Sixty years after his remains were found in Illinois, investigators have identified “Geneseo John Doe” as Ronald Joe Cole, a California teen missing since 1965.
GENESEO, Ill. — Sixty years after his remains were found near Geneseo, investigators have identified the “Geneseo John Doe” as 19-year-old Ronald Joe Cole of Fillmore, California.
Cole vanished in 1965. His remains were discovered the following year, thousands of miles away in Illinois, but went unidentified for decades.
On Oct. 27, 1966, a postman found a human skull near a creek southeast of Geneseo. The FBI determined the man had been shot in the head and died one to five years earlier. Additional skeletal remains were located nearby and investigators estimated the victim was between 16 and 30 years old.
In 2024, the Henry County Sheriff’s Office brought the cold case to the DNA Doe Project. The nonprofit generated a DNA profile from the remains and uploaded it to GEDmatch, revealing several distant cousin matches.
“We are very grateful for the relatives who chose to upload their DNA results to GEDmatch,” said Gwen Knapp with DNA Doe Project. “Unusually, our team had good matches on both the father’s side and the mother’s side to work with.”
After several days of research, the team found information online about Cole, noting he had been listed as a murder victim whose body had never been recovered. Further DNA testing confirmed the remains belonged to Cole.
Cole was living with his half-brother, David LaFever, at the time of his disappearance. Investigators had previously named LaFever as the prime suspect in Cole’s disappearance and in the murder of his brother-in-law.
LaFever and his wife, Margaret, were arrested in 1983 on unrelated charges. Authorities later learned LaFever had confessed to killing Cole. In 1984, the body of Margaret’s brother — who had gone missing in 1977 — was found in a shallow grave near the LaFevers’ former home. Police named LaFever the prime suspect in both cases, but he was never charged.
The DNA Doe Project credited multiple partners in helping identify Cole, including the Henry County Sheriff’s Office; Astrea Forensics for DNA extraction; Azenta Life Sciences for sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro; and donors and volunteer genealogists.
The Henry County Sheriff’s Office said the investigation remains active and ongoing. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the department.