Article here.



BOISE, Idaho The headless torso that was found in a remote Idaho cave 40 years ago has finally been identified as belonging to an outlaw who killed his wife with an ax and was last seen after escaping from jail in 1916.

Clark County Sheriff Bart May said Tuesday that the cold case will remain open because investigators don’t yet know who killed Joseph Henry Loveless. Still, they were able to notify one of Loveless’ surviving relatives, an 87-year-old grandson, of his fate.

For investigators, the mystery began when a family hunting for arrowheads in Buffalo Cave near Dubois, Idaho, on Aug. 26, 1979, found his remains wrapped in burlap and buried in a shallow grave. Few additional clues turned up until March 30, 1991, when a girl exploring the same cave system found a mummified hand. Investigators began excavating, finding an arm and two legs nearby, also wrapped in burlap.
Local authorities turned to Idaho State University for help, and over the subsequent years anthropology students and staffers from ISU worked on the case. Experts from the Smithsonian Institution and the FBI were recruited to assist. No other remains were ever found, however, and without the head, identifying the John Doe of Buffalo Cave seemed unlikely.

The scientists were able to determine the slain man’s hair was reddish brown, that he was of European descent, that he may have been around 40 years old when he died, and that his body had been there for at least six months and possibly as long as 10 or more years. They weren’t able to tell what killed the man, though they could determine that his body was dismembered by a variety of sharp tools, perhaps to make it easier for his killer to hide the remains.

Earlier this year ISU and Clark County authorities asked the DNA Doe Project for help. The non-profit organization uses DNA data to identify John and Jane Does in hopes of returning their remains to their families.

Experts from Othram, a technology company focused on forensic DNA sequencing, analyzed a sample taken from the remains. Then Lee Bingham Redgrave, a forensic genealogist with DNA Doe Project, worked with her colleagues to build a “genealogical tree.”

It was huge. The Buffalo Cave John Doe was descended from pioneers who came to Utah with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and his likely grandfather was a polygamist with four wives. That meant Doe’s cousins and other relatives numbered in the hundreds, said Bingham Redgrave.

Investigators also weren’t sure what time period the remains came from, further broadening the field of possibilities.

“He ended up having a lot of matches that were first cousins three times removed, which is very unusual in this type of scenario,” Bingham Redgrave said. “One by one we eliminated certain candidates and kept coming back to him.”

They used news articles, gravestone information and other records to try to find proof of life for all of the DNA candidates, she said. They noticed a few things about Joseph Henry Loveless’s life didn’t seem to add up. His gravestone was actually a cenotaph, a stone with his name on it but no body buried underneath.

Loveless’s second wife, Agnes Octavia Caldwell Loveless, had been murdered on May 5, 1916, by a man named Walt Cairns, according to news articles and a wanted poster created by local law enforcement at the time.

But according to another local news article on Agnes’ funeral, one of her children said that it was his father in jail for the murder, not Walt Cairns. The child also remarked that his dad would be escaping soon because he never stayed in jail long.
The DNA Doe Project team eventually unraveled the truth: Joseph Henry Loveless was born Dec. 3, 1870, in the Utah Territory to Mormon pioneers. He married twice — his first wife Harriett Jane Savage divorced him for “abandonment,” according to Salt Lake City court records — and became a bootlegger, counterfeiter and general outlaw in Idaho.

Loveless used a variety of aliases during his criminal career, including Walt Cairns, Charles Smith and other variations of his given and phony names. He was also notorious for escaping custody, Bingham Redgrave said, sawing through jail bars with a blade he kept in his shoe and once managing to stop a moving train that he was being transported on to flee law enforcement.

Investigators believe he died shortly after he escaped from the St. Anthony jail on May 18, 1916, where he was being held for Agnes’ murder.

“It’s blown everyone’s minds,” Bingham Redgrave said of the investigation. “The really cool thing, though, is that his wanted poster from his last escape is described as wearing the same clothing that he was found in, so that leads us to put his death date at likely 1916.”

Loveless’ descendants were unaware of their ancestor’s sordid past, so at this point there’s not much more to go on besides speculation when it comes to the identity of Loveless’ murderer.

Still, with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office keeping the case open as a homicide investigation, more clues may turn up yet.

“Who knows? Someone might recognize that name and say, ‘Oh, let me look at the old family photos.’ Someone may find something, an old news story, that isn’t digitized,” Bingham Redgrave said. “I’m really excited to see what else comes out.”

He was one ugly ornery looking dude. Sounds like someone took the law into their hands and gave him what was coming to him.

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USS Brewton FF1086
SWCA#3597

Yep. A face that says, "BIG trouble."

Not likely to have been voted "Most Likely To Get a Head" in this HS graduation yearbook

Chuck Conners grand dad?

He should’ve quit while he was ahead.

Isn't that Freddy Krueger before he got burned?

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Expect the unexpected

Excellent article and thanks for posting. These stories of finding decades old remains are especially fascinating. Just recently, the remains of an infant, an adolescent and an adult were found during an excavation of a portion of the Alamo battle site in San Antonio, TX.

Looks like a case of suicide.

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That's gonna leave a mark.

I'm thinking of a different tale from a friend's family. In the 1930's, A no account husband was in a bar bragging that, "He sure showed the old lady!" Two of her cousins were in that bar, one went to get her brothers the other went straight to her cabin. She had been tied to the wood stove, and the cabin set on fire! She was still alive and mostly unburnt, but had been badly beaten.

Strangely enough, her no good husband "Left Town" that night and was never heard from again!

When I first heard the story in the late 1970's I pondered it for months, it just didn't add up. Then "It" dawned on me, I knew exactly where the no account scumbag was hiding! On the grandpa's farm, there was a 20 to 30 acre steep hillside, it was sturdily fence and full of almost wild pigs! It is now a very nice neighborhood outside Little Rock!

According to the Vicky Laurence song "That's The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia!", Brothers are not the only ones the find justice for abused family members!

Ivan

Yep! Text book open and shut case.

Gather up the "usual suspects".

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Expect the unexpected

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

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Only a cold warrior

Thanks, a interesting and neat story. DNA is beginning to unravel many mysteries! memtb

Was he “friends” with a certain politicians family?

I passed the article on to my gf, who teaches genetics at university and she said, "Ooooooh... I see a genetics problem coming up!" for use in her classes. (She also uses her two ginormous Norwegian forest cats coloring for teaching, so the students get some interesting problems to work on.)

Dubois is a small town in a very rural area. Clark County runs from Yellowstone Ntnl Park to W of I-15 and has many more sheep, cattle and wild game than people. It is also just N of the area many Idahoans call "the lava beds", broken lava rock that stretches across much of SE Idaho and is hard on boots and hooves. It is blessed with an 8 month winter and a 3 week spring and fall. Nice place to live if you can find work and like the out of the way lifestyle.

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Front sight and squeeze

Was he a Hessian soldier from Sleepy Hollow?

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Kind of a macabre suggestion but I would say whoever killed him most likely kept his head for proof or identification if there was any reward offered for him.

Or disposed of it in some way to make ID-ing the corpse harder, remembering that such might have been the only practical manner in those days. Or it was taken by a wild animal, also known to happen a lot.

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NHI, 10-8.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs...

(Rudyard Kipling)

Here’s an additional article on the topic. The speculation is, much as in Ivan’s story in post 9 above, that the second wife, the one he murdered, her family got him and, uh, disappeared him:

Headless Body in Cave Is Identified as 1916 Ax Murder Suspect - The New York Times

I speculate they killed him elsewhere and dismembered him for more convenient transport and disposal. Disposing of the head elsewhere might have been a tactic to avoid identification of the corpse.

This story is getting quite a lot of coverage in the press now. It's an intriguing mystery and it will be interesting to see what other details and long-hidden family stories emerge now that it's been resurrected.

So the evidence indicates he was killed shortly after he escaped jail in 1916.

Makes me wonder if he escaped or if he was busted out by some of his dead wife's family members in the name of some rough frontier justice.

Guess we'll never know.

Interesting story, indeed!

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

This was my niece Amy's deal:

"In 2019, Blatt and former ISU professor Amy Michael, now at the University of New Hampshire, worked with volunteer forensic genealogists from the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization formed to identify unknown deceased persons, to find his name. Blatt collected DNA samples from the remains stored at Idaho State, helped crowdfund the DNA analysis and consulted with Michael and DNA Doe Project genealogists about contextual and biological evidence."

She's the one on the left.



She's the only doc (PhD) we're likely to get in my family. She's also worked identifying the remains of US servicemen in Vietnam.

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Rule of law, not a man.

A prime example of frontier justice.....'Some people just deserve killin'.

Poor guy was burried without a headstone! Would made identification much easier!

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Cling Peaches in Heavy Syrup

He had no legs, so how did they know he was a bootlegger?

Gad, they're investigating this thug as thoroughly as they have Oetzi! Interestingly, both men were murder victims.

My DIL is a geneticist. I asked her to help Santa Claus clone a couple of my favorite VS models for Christmas. She just rolled her eyes...

Theoretically, I guess this cloning would be possible. Now, I just need to get DNA from Candice, Doutzen, Alessandra, and Devon. Then, I'd still need to win a major sweepstakes so I could afford to date them!

And they have ALL of Ötzi to work with, too.
My GF is as well. (See post #14) I'm not gonna ask her the same question as you asked your DIL, though. I think rolled eyes would be the least of my problems.

Not to mention his head...