PREBLE COUNTY — For 55 years there has been an unmarked grave at Mound Hill Cemetery in Eaton, but this year law enforcement discovered who that person was and the family cannot be more grateful.
It all began with two boys finding the skeleton of a person in a drainage ditch while playing by an Eaton creek in 1968. Investigators believed the bones belonged to a missing woman.
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Recently, a woman came forward believing the Jane Doe was her missing relative, Mary Jane Croft Vangilder. In 2019, investigators decided to bring Vangider’s possible remains to the surface for testing and exhumed the remains.
“The bones of the Jane Doe were underneath a layer of soap and sediment. The original casket had completely disintegrated,” Adam Turner, a detective from the Shelby, Ohio Police Department, said.
The bones could still be analyzed and when they were, the results were shocking.
“There was male DNA present in the bone,” Turner said.
Further genealogical testing found a match to Albert Allen Frost, a missing man from Hamilton, Ohio.
News Center 7 spoke to one of Frost’s great-nieces Friday. She said she remembers stories about him that her grandmother would tell.
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“He was the kind of guy who didn’t look you in the eye, would talk only if spoken directly. (He) was very proud of his military service,” Tina Barrett said.
While she is happy to finally put an end to this long family mystery, it pains her that Frost’s mother never knew what happened to her son.
“If there is another mother out there who’s waiting for her child, (I hope) that she at least gets an answer. I think that it shouldn’t have to come after she dies,” Barrett said.