Cold Case Solved: 56-Year-Old Allegany John Doe Identified as Clyde Coppage

A headless and handless body found on Davis Hill Road in Andover, Allegany County, on March 20, 1970, has a name. The New York State Police announced on March 12, 2026 that the remains, known for decades as Allegany County John Doe (1970), belong to Clyde A. Coppage, a 35-year-old who was living in Genesee, Pennsylvania at the time of his death. He was not originally from the area, and no one had ever reported him missing.

The case had all the hallmarks of something sinister from the start. According to Wellsville Daily Reporter archives, it was John Billings Sr., a Davis Hill resident heading to his shift at the Air Preheater Company in Wellsville, who first came across the remains. Investigators at the time described the killing as a "gangland-style" slaying and noted an "X" slashed into the chest. A 1970 autopsy failed to determine a cause of death. With no identity and no missing persons report to work from, the victim was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and remained a John Doe for over half a century.

The break came through modern forensic science. On June 7, 2022, investigators exhumed the body from Andover's Hillside Cemetery specifically to collect DNA. The following year, the New York State Police submitted that forensic evidence to Othram, a specialized DNA laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas. Working from the skeletal remains, Othram scientists used a process called identity inference, which is designed to identify individuals from DNA evidence even when no known reference sample exists at the outset. Using their Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing method, the lab built a comprehensive SNP profile from the remains and returned it to the FBI's forensic genetic genealogy team.

The FBI used that profile to generate investigative leads pointing to potential relatives of the unidentified man. A follow-up investigation located those relatives, reference DNA samples were collected and compared against the profile developed from the remains, and the match confirmed what the genealogy work had suggested: the Allegany County John Doe was Clyde A. Coppage.

The investigation remains open and active. Anyone with information about Coppage is asked to contact the New York State Police at 585-344-6200.

For the true crime community that has tracked this case through NamUs listings and forensic genealogy forums, the identification is a reminder of what this generation of DNA tools can do with cold cases that stumped investigators for generations. A man whose disappearance went unreported for 56 years now has his name back, and the question of who put a body on Davis Hill Road without a head or hands is still very much unanswered.