Police used DNA to identify boy more than 50 years after his body was found. What happened to him remains a mystery
How police identified a boy decades after his body was found
- A four-year-old boy, Carl Matthew Bryant, found murdered in Lorton, Virginia, in June 1972, has been identified over 50 years later using advanced DNA testing.
- Bryant died from blunt force trauma, but the exact circumstances leading to his death remain a mystery despite his identification.
- Police utilised advanced DNA testing and forensic-grade genome sequencing, including a few millimetres of hair, to trace his family and confirm his identity through his mother, Vera Bryant, whose body was exhumed.
- Detectives suspect Bryant's mother, Vera Bryant (now deceased), and her then-boyfriend, James Hedgepeth (also deceased), were involved in his murder.
- The case is further complicated by the disappearance and presumed murder of Bryant's six-month-old brother, James, whose body has never been found.