2-year-old found dead identified after 58 years

ASHLAND, Ore. — A man fishing in southern Oregon near Ashland on July 11, 1963, came upon the body of a 2-year-old boy, concealed under blankets, tied with wire and weighed down by heavy pieces of iron.

The toddler went unidentified until Monday, when the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office announced his identity on Facebook, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. A DNA match and some genealogical sleuthing revealed he was Stevie Crawford, born in New Mexico on Oct. 2, 1960.

The remains were found by a Rogue River man as he was fishing in the Keene Creek Reservoir along Oregon 66, the sheriff’s office said.

In 2007 a sheriff’s detective found the case among old file boxes and the toddler’s body was exhumed in 2008. A DNA sample was taken, but no leads were found.

In December, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office received a tip, which they didn’t describe, but an investigator ran the genetic sample through an open-source DNA repository and located two possible siblings.

In an interview with investigators, one of the siblings, a DNA-confirmed maternal half-brother in Ohio, said that he had a young sibling with Down syndrome — a genetic disorder that aided in the identification — who was born in New Mexico and went missing.

How he died and came to be placed in that location remains unclear.