By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
Almost three years after an unidentified man died in Olean, funds are being raised to help identify him so his remains can go home.
“Help Identify Olean John Doe,” is a gofundme page set up by Lori Adams, who is attempting to raise money for DNA testing and ancestral research.
The man had a medical incident on the sidewalk in the 300 block of South Barry Street on July 14, 2023, according to Capt. Robert Blovsky, an Olean Police Department investigator.
An ambulance was summoned and took the man, described as a Black man, age 30-60, 6-foot, 1-inch and weighing 352 pounds, to Olean General Hospital. He had thick gray-brown hair and was balding. Both arms had tattoos.
John Doe died in Buffalo General Hospital 17 days after he was found unconscious on the Olean sidewalk. He did not regain consciousness. The cause of death was listed as an overdose, according to the Eric County Medical Examiner’s Office
In a bid to identify John Doe, Blovsky released photos of his arms and a description of the tattoos to local news and social media in December 2023. No leads were developed from the tattoos, he told the Olean Star. There were no matches from the victim’s fingerprints or DNA.
Blovsky said John Doe has no possessions or identification. “There is very little to go on. I knew he wasn’t from around here. I thought he might be from Buffalo. His prints never came back.”
Two years later Lisa Adams contacted Blovsky offering to try to identify John Doe through forensic genealogy and DNA. Adams, a Grand Island realtor, and her friend Cindy Gibson former The Missing Link Family Tree LLC. After helping about 60 people find lost relatives, they teamed up with a North Carolina group doing cold case work.
Three of the five cases they worked on have been solved, Adams said, including a 1968 cold case involving the death of a Jane Doe.
Adams and Gibson decided to apply their skills in forensic genealogy to some local cases and consulted with WNY Missing & Unidentified Persons. The group suggested Olean’s John Doe.
WNY Missing & Unidentified was co-founded by Merry Williams-Diers and Jo Patterson.
Adams said police agencies use a different DNA process that does not translate to genealogical tracing. Ancestry and 23 and Me, the two major genealogy companies use a different DNA for their database to be able to build a fuller family tree that includes not only parents and full-blooded siblings, but cousins as well.
Adams has been working with Blovsky to get the correct SMP DNA test for John Doe that can be uploaded to Ancestry or 23 and Me. She has checked with two labs that can perform the necessary testing and uploading of the results for about $6,000.
This is how Adams plans to find who John Doe is related to.
“We’re donating our time for this,” Adams said. “The pictures of the tattoos surprisingly did not produce any results” for police. The photos were shown to Western New York tattoo artists and in Northwest Pennsylvania.
“We’re hoping for renewed interest with the release of John Doe’s photo,” Adams said.
Those interested in helping to return John Doe to his family can help by reposting the photo and story on social media and donate to the gofundme fundraiser to test and upload his DNA in formation, Adams said.
“To be able to give some family some closure is rewarding to us,” Adams said.
The gofundme page — https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-identify-john-and-jane-does-with-dna?attribution_id=sl:e2ae497f-d50e-4b29-a68f-922fb0673dd9&lang=en_US&ts=1770632739&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_content=amp17_td&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link — has raised $1,226 in small donations over the past two days, or 77% of the $1,600 goal
Adams and Blovsky are seeking other funding avenues as well to raise the total $6,000.
Adams urged people to share the Facebook and other posts in hopes that someone who knows who John Doe is will see it and come forward.
For questiobns about donations, Adams can be reached at (716) 628-9800. For tips on identifying John Doe, Blovsky can be reached at (716) 376-5673.
In her Facebook post on Olean’s John Doe, Adams wrote: “These are not just cases—they are real people who deserve to be known and remembered. Even a small donation brings us closer to identifying one more Doe and reuniting them with their family’s history. Together, we can make sure “unidentified” is never the final chapter.”
