Coroner’s cold case: 32-year mystery man ‘not just a box of bones’

May 7, 2023 - Phil Gianficaro

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The bones of the unidentified dead have much to say.

But to the dismay of Lehigh County Coroner Daniel A. Buglio, those pieces of a person in a weathered cardboard box on a high shelf of his office's evidence room have stopped talking.

At least for now.

• Lehigh County Coroner Daniel A. Buglio is working to determine the identity of skeletal remains discovered in Canal Park in Allentown in April 1991

• Forensic analysis has shown the remains to be an African-American male, aged 25-35 at time of death, who grew up in the South

• The unidentified case is the only one remaining in Lehigh County

It is Lehigh County's only remaining case of an unidentified body, and it's more than three decades old.