Overview

• Ordnance-disposal divers from the Kampfmittelbergungsdienst recovered a plastic-wrapped human skull in the Veltener Stichkanal on April 25 while preparing a bridge demolition.
• Radiocarbon analysis established the remains date between 1667 and 1954 and police traced one plastic bag to production between 1965 and 2006.
• Forensic anthropologists in Vienna identified the skull as belonging to a Central European man aged 35 to 65 with no evidence of trauma.
• The Freiburg institute successfully extracted DNA but found no matches in missing-person or criminal databases and ruled out a post-1954 death as a homicide.
• Prosecutors in Neuruppin are now combing decades-old missing-person files to seek identification leads for the unidentified individual.