wfn.org | Paducah, Ky.'s 'John Doe' was somebody's beloved son

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Aug. 6, 1999 News media contact: Thomas S. McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.    10-21-71BP{410}

NOTE: A photograph is available for use with this story.

A UMNS News Feature
By Cathy Farmer*

John Doe was somebody's son. 

The young man - handsome and athletic --  tried to talk a ticket agent at
Barkley Regional Airport near Paducah, Ky., into swapping a leather bomber
jacket for a plane ticket out West. Told by the agent "that's not the way it
works," he scaled the fence around the airfield, chased and caught the
undercarriage of a plane as it taxied down the runway and hung on until it
reached an altitude of 300 feet. Then he fell to his death. The date was
Sept. 30, 1991.

"John Doe" had no identification. McCracken County coroner Jerry Beyer,
called to the scene, was determined to find his family.

"I autopsied the young man, fingerprinted him and took pictures," said
Beyer, a member of  Paducah's Concord United Methodist Church. "Then I
embalmed him so we could keep his body as long as possible. I wanted to find
his family. I have children of my own, and I know I'd want to know what
happened to them."

Beyer entered John Doe's  fingerprints on the National Crime Information
Computer, hoping to get a match. He urged the local newspaper, The Paducah
Sun, to run stories. But there were no nibbles.

After a year, Beyer and his pastor, the Rev. Joe Geary, arranged a memorial
service for the man the whole community now called "our" John Doe.

"It was a struggle to know what to say," admitted Geary, pastor of Concord
Church at the time. "The challenge was to do a meaningful Christian service
when you knew nothing about the person. I eventually chose a passage from
Leviticus where God calls upon the children of Israel to welcome the
stranger, the alien at their gate." The verse was appropriate.  Paducah did
welcome this stranger, adopting him as one of their own. 

"We didn't bury him in a  pauper's grave," Beyer said. "A grave site was
donated at Oak Grove Cemetery."  Everything for the burial was donated
including a large monument engraved with his story and the name John Doe.

Claudia Speed, one of the  local florists, sent a casket spray of red roses.
On the card she wrote, "From your mother. I know she cares." Speed's own son
had died the year before. The hundreds who attended the memorial service to
say good-bye did not forget him as the years went by. Every year, on the
anniversary of his death, flowers would appear on the grave under the big
tree.

Beyer didn't give up. "We don't accept defeatism around here," he declared.
"I don't like to be a loser." For almost eight years, he kept searching. He
even managed to get the case on the "Unsolved Mysteries" TV show  in 1992.
"We had over 300 calls from people looking for a loved one," he said, "but
none of them were our John Doe." 

When the show was rebroadcast in 1997, it was seen by Dee Duecker, the wife
of a United Methodist pastor in Edenton, Ohio, just outside Cincinnati.
Duecker and her husband Gerald were searching for their missing 28-year-old
son, Brian Stanley Duecker. Brian disappeared
on Sept. 26, 1991.

"I called, but they told me it wasn't Brian," Dee Duecker said. "The
description didn't match completely. But somehow, I just knew it was him. It
stayed in the back of my mind."

Beyer continued to work the case and prodded Paducah Sun reporter Bill
Bartleman to write another story on John Doe. Bartleman added the stories to
his personal Internet Web site. That's where Dee Duecker found them a few
weeks ago.

"I did a search for information about the Paducah airport death," she said.
"That's when I found Bill's story." She sent him an e-mail requesting
information.

"She had a picture of her stepson on her own Web site," said Bartleman. "I
took it to Jerry Beyer. We felt sure it was our John Doe."

A search was made for Brian's fingerprints. The match with was perfect.
Paducah's John Doe had a name and a family.

"We spent so many years trying to find Brian," said Gerald Duecker. "We were
relieved. It was difficult to lose him but it was so comforting to know that
he was adopted by the community, that he had a Christian burial. 

"Brian was schizophrenic," he explained. "He saw nothing as impossible. I'm
sure he thought he could jump on that plane and ride it out west."
The Duecker family visited Brian's grave in Paducah in June and promised to
come back Sept. 18, bringing another headstone with Brian's real name on it.
They expressed gratitude for  the whole town taking their son into their
hearts.

They also visited Concord Church with Beyer.  The current pastor, the Rev.
Barry Scott, said the Dueckers asked him to thank the congregation. "They
said they were overwhelmed with how kind everyone had been."
# # #

*Farmer is communications director of the United Methodist Church's Memphis
Annual Conference. This story first appeared in the conference edition of
the United Methodist Reporter.

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