Niagara Falls Victim's Body Was Found 140 Miles Away

Remains found on the shores of Lake Ontario 32 years ago have now been identified as those of a New York man who's believed to have gone over Niagara Falls. CBS News reports the "badly decomposed and mostly skeletal" remains were found some 140 miles from the falls in April 1992; efforts to identify them at the time went nowhere, as did a 2008 attempt to find a DNA match in a national database. Genetic genealogy did what those efforts couldn't.

A new DNA sample taken in 2022 was in February 2024 found to be a familial match with DNA from relatives of Vincent Stack. The 40-year-old Buffalo man went missing in Niagara Falls State Park in 1990. Police suspect Stack went over the falls, and that over the next 16 months his body floated 15 miles to the mouth of a river, then traveled another 130 miles across Lake Ontario, ultimately washing up on Oswego's shores. Syracuse.com and CNY Central report the Oswego County Sheriff's Office gave credit to Canadian police, who obtained the 2022 DNA sample, for being the "driving force in bringing closure in this case." (More Niagara Falls stories.)