Police ID man whose body travelled 235 km in Niagara waters, starting in 1990

The Associated Press

· Posted: Apr 04, 2024 9:41 AM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

A body that washed up on the shores of Lake Ontario in 1992 has been identified as a Buffalo man who is believed to have died going over Niagara Falls.

Vincent Stack went missing in Niagara Falls State Park on Dec. 4, 1990. DNA technology helped identify his remains, which drifted 24 kilometres to the mouth of the Niagara River, and then 210 kilometres across Lake Ontario, before washing ashore on April 8, 1992, the Oswego County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

The remains were badly decomposed and mostly skeletal when they were discovered, the sheriff's office said. The medical examiner determined that the unidentified person had been dead between six months and five years. 

Thirty years later, in 2022, the sheriff's office renewed its efforts to identify the remains and reached out to the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario for help.

Det. Const. Sara Mummery of the Ontario department assisted with obtaining a new DNA sample from the remains that had washed ashore in 1992 for comparison with missing persons cases in both the United States and Canada, the sheriff's office said.

In February 2024, authorities were able to match the DNA sample with genetic material collected from the family of Stack, who was 40 when he disappeared, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in the U.S.

The sheriff's office notified Stack's family of the identification. The Oswego County Sheriff's Office and the Niagara Regional Police Service are each working to identify other unidentified remains cases in the area, the authorities said.