Hillsboro, MO – On July 22, 2025, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced that a team of law enforcement, medical staff, and genetics experts have identified the body of a “John Doe” case from over 30 years ago. In 1994, a body of a man was found in the Mississippi River south of Festus and sequentially was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Louis after law enforcement then was unable to identify the body.

The body of “John Doe” was exhumed last fall in an effort to finally identify the body. Thanks to the modern team’s efforts to extract and sequence the DNA of “John Doe” and scourer records and databases to match profiles, they were able to now identify “John Doe” as Benny Leo Olson from Illinois.

The team whose efforts eventually identified Olson’s body were from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Jail Administrator of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

Paul Barnard Editor

Paul Barnard is the editor of the Twin City News. Barnard Graduated from Norwich University, America's oldest private military college, with a B.S. in Communications and Media Technology. There he studied journalism and marketing. For years after, Barnard was in law enforcement and gained experience in the Special Investigations Unit and publishing all the department's press releases. As Barnard's family grew, he moved on to start Twin City News.

See Full Bio