On August 7, 1969, the body of a White male was discovered by a work crew in a water-filled pit on the side of Interstate 93 in Salem, New Hampshire. For fifty years, he remained unidentified, a John Doe buried in a local cemetery. The man, Winston Richard Morris, known as "Skip," was 30 years old at the time of his death. An autopsy revealed he had been shot multiple times, with wounds to his head, torso, and neck, leading authorities to rule his death a homicide.
It was presumed his body had been there for about a week before being found.
Winston Richard Morris was a lifelong resident of Vermont, a U.S. Air Force veteran, and a father. He was last seen alive in Burlington, Vermont, on July 25, 1969, just a few months after being released from prison that May. In the weeks leading up to his death, he had also spent time in Boston, Massachusetts, and Glastonbury, Connecticut. His family had spent decades searching for him, contacting police, the Salvation Army, and even the television show "Unsolved Mysteries" in their efforts to learn his whereabouts.
Despite the initial investigation and the collection of fingerprints, Morris's identity remained a mystery for half a century due to the lack of national fingerprint databases at the time. In 2012, his body was exhumed as part of a renewed effort by the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit. Finally, in 2019, through what was described as "old school" fingerprinting techniques, a criminalist was able to successfully match his prints to those in the FBI database, at last giving a name to the long-unidentified victim. To this day, the murder of Winston Richard Morris remains an unsolved homicide. No arrests have ever been made, and there are no publicly identified suspects in connection with his death. The investigation into who killed him is still ongoing.
