Man's body believed to have gone over Niagara Falls identified more than 30 years later

A person's badly decomposed body that washed up on a Lake Ontario shore after it presumably went over Niagara Falls has been identified more than three decades later, officials in New York announced this week.

According to the Oswego County Sheriff's Office, remains found on April 8, 1992 near what is now the Novelis Plant belonged to Vincent C. Stack of Buffalo, who disappeared in Niagara Falls State Park around Dec. 4, 1990.

Oswego County, north of Syracuse, borders Lake Ontario and is more than 100 miles east of Niagara Falls.

According to the medical examiner’s office, an autopsy determined the person died between six months and five years prior to the discovery of his body 34 years ago, the agency announced Tuesday in a Facebook post.

"At the time, efforts to identify the remains by comparing them to missing person cases were unsuccessful," the sheriff's office wrote.

Sixteen years later, in 2008, a DNA profile of the remains was uploaded to the CODIS database but, officials said, no leads were generated until recently.

Renewed efforts and a familiar DNA match to Vincent Stack

In April 2022, during renewed efforts to identify the remains, the sheriff's office and the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario began comparing the death investigation with unsolved cases in Canada.

At that time, police Detective Constable Sara Mummery assisted with obtaining a new DNA sample from the remains for further comparison in the Lake Ontario area in both Canada and the United States.

In February, the new DNA sample was found to be a familial match to DNA collected from Stack's family.

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Body likely went over falls and traveled 145 miles across Lake Ontario

Over the next year and four months after Stack's went missing, officials said, his remains would have traveled some 15 miles to the mouth of the river, and then more than 130 miles across Lake Ontario before being discovered on the shore outside the city of Oswego.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the sheriff's office.

Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X @nataliealund.