The untidy murder of Craig Rideout

If his killers hadn’t bought the wrong shovel, Craig Rideout’s body might still be in the Yates County woods

The Liquid Lightning Drain Opener had done its intended job of obliterating his face and fingerprints, but time and scavengers would also have made him unrecognizable. Rideout, 50, an IT specialist and father of seven from Rochester, NY, could easily have joined the ranks of the missing or unidentified dead within weeks of being dumped off a quiet country road. Instead, he was the victim in one of 2017’s most notorious murder trials.

What almost happened to Craig Rideout illuminates a little-known national issue: A National Institute of Justice report says as many as 40,000 sets of unidentified remains languish in morgues, medical examiner’s offices and anonymous graves around the country; including more than 1,300 in New York State alone.

The region encompassing Rochester, Buffalo and Niagara Falls possesses a profusion of unidentified cold-case victims, including Caledonia Jane Doe, or Cali. Found November 10, 1979, in a cornfield near Caledonia, NY, an adolescent girl shot twice, execution-style. It took 35 years for her to be identified as Tammy Jo Alexander, a teenage runaway from Brooksville, FL. Her murder is unsolved.