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(CNN) - The bones discovered in an Idaho cave in 1979 and 1991 have been identified as the remains of Joseph Henry Loveless, a man who escaped from prison more than a century after being arrested for killing his wife.
The identification, confirmed by the Clark County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, was initially made by the voluntary non-profit organization DNA Doe Project, which said in a Facebook post that “the remains were preserved in the Buffalo cave during 63 years. ”
Loveless probably died around 1916 at age 46, the organization said. He seems to have been killed and dismembered.
Before his death, Loveless had been arrested at least twice for contraband and escaped custody by sawing the bars of the jail, the organization said.
At that time, Clark County Sheriff Bart May said Loveless killed his wife with an ax and was jailed in what was then Freemont County. He escaped again, this time using a saw that he hid in his shoe, the organization said. They never saw him again.
"In 1916, here was the wild west and the locals probably took care of the problem," May said. "We will probably never resolve the homicide, but we still encourage anyone who has heard stories to contact our office, you never know what information could help."
The DNA Doe Project had to overcome numerous obstacles before making a positive identification. Loveless used multiple aliases, had no close living relatives in the national database and was an out-of-network outlaw who lacked official records.
The volunteers examined more than 31,730 people trying to find a connection with the man's DNA.
Discoveries
The identification process of Loveless's bones has been under development for 40 years.
In August 1979, a family discovered a male torso wrapped in a sack in a cave near Dubois.
"With dark pants, white shirt with blue stripes and brown sweater, the torso was buried in a shallow grave 18 inches deep," DNA Doe Project said in a statement.
Approximately 12 years later, a mummified hand was found, along with one arm and two legs wrapped in the same bag material in the same cave system. The volunteer staff and students at Idaho State University continued to review the cave, but never found other remains, including the head of the body, the organization said.
The university's anthropology professors and students worked with the organization's volunteers to arrive at a provisional identification, which was sent to the sheriff's office in November 2019.
A relative appears
May said his office located an 87-year-old Loveless grandson who lived in California and agreed to meet with the agents and give a DNA sample.
Those results were analyzed by the organization and were found to be 100% consistent with a grandparents / grandchildren relationship, he said.
"The grandson had heard stories about his grandmother and grandfather," said the sheriff. But family stories about Loveless's death did not match what the organization found through original records and newspaper articles, the organization said.
Loveless's death remains an open case.
"We know he was killed, but we don't know who killed him," May said.