Unknown Body in Texas City ID'd as Mississippi Teen Missing Since 1973

TEXAS CITY, TX — If there is a contest for teenage runaway poster boy, Joseph Norman Spears might win it.

In August 1973, Spear, 17, escaped from the Harrison County Youth Detention Center in Gulfport, MS. Two weeks later he was killed trying to cross I-45 in Texas City. When Spears died he didn't have any money or ID on him.

After his death newspapers labeled Spears as a "mystery youth" and printed a description of him that sounds borrowed from either a romance novel or a dating profile: 5'9", 150 lbs., dark blue eyes, deep suntan, shoulder-length dark brown hair and virtually perfect teeth.

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The picture that ran with the if-you-know-who-this-is article looks like it could be Jared Leto in the Jordan Catalano years. Another newspaper article described Spears as having a cigarette burn on his wrist.

After two months of waiting for the remains to be claimed, the James Crowder Funeral Home in La Marque decided to go ahead and bury him.

The community chipped in and bout Spears a funeral, a white casket and a small plot at the Grace Memorial Park Cemetery in Texas City. Six members of the La Marque High School Key Club volunteered to serve as pall bearers and two clergymen from Paul's Union Church in La Marque officiated the ceremony.

Fast forward about 40 years, Chelsea Davidson — an employee at Hayes Grace Memorial Park — becomes intrigued by the headstone that reads Unknown Teen. Davidson starts digging into old newspapers and compares the description and photos to the cases in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

She comes across Spears file, which mentions cigarette burns on the wrists. Davidson calls the Harrison County Sheriff's Office and talks to Kristi Johnson, the officer assigned to deal with Spears' case.

Davidson sent Johnson a photo of Spears' body from around the time of his death. Johnson showed that photo to Spears' mother Mary Rashkin.

Rashkin made an initial identification. Based upon Rashkin's identification a court order was issued to exhume Spears' body for DNA testing.

Which is when things got a little more complicated, it turns out that whoever prepped Spears' body didn't do a very good of preserving it. After 43 years of decomp it was impossible to get a proper DNA sample, which is surprising.

However, the Galveston County Medical Examiner's office did release Spears' body to Rashkin based on her initial photo identification. Spears' body will be cremated and he will be returned to his family.

Image credit: via Shutterstock