‘Specks’ of hair lead Fairfax police to ID boy found murdered 53 years ago

Hair saved from the crime scene and new DNA technology identified the 4-year-old boy as Carl Matthew Bryant. Photo / Getty Images

Hair saved in a case file and the latest DNA technology led US police to the name of a 4-year-old boy found dead 53 years ago under a bridge in the state of Virginia. But who killed Carl Matthew Bryant, and why, remains a mystery.

Fairfax police said Bryant was travelling from Philadelphia to Middlesex County, Virginia, on a family trip on June 13, 1972 – the day his body was found in Massey Creek under the Old Colchester Rd Bridge.

An autopsy revealed he died of blunt-force trauma, and authorities ruled his death a homicide. But police for decades couldn’t figure out who he was. Nobody, including Bryant’s mother, reported a missing child that matched his description.

He was buried at Coleman Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, and given the moniker “Charles Lee Charlet” by a local church.

The case sat cold for years, with a few spots of daylight along the way.

In 2003, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children released a computer-generated sketch of Carl and was flooded with the most tips the organisation has ever received about a case in Virginia, said Brooke Wright, assistant police chief in Fairfax County. But every tip was a dead end.

The next year, detectives with Fairfax County police’s cold case squad were reviewing evidence from the original case file. They found “little specks [of hair], like razor stubble,” said Melissa Wallace, a cold case detective. It was enough hair to test for a DNA match, but the search of a national database came up empty.

Twelve years later, detectives attempted to exhume Carl’s body for more DNA, but his tombstone had been washed away by a storm, Wallace said.

The hair would be their only hope.

The case sat cold for several more years, until detectives sent some of the hair to a California-based lab, Astrea Forensics. Astrea, which typically requires at least 2cm of hair – 10 times the amount police provided – for genetic testing, was able to build a DNA profile and link Carl to a Philadelphia woman named Vera Bryant.

Vera Bryant died in 1980, but police interviews with family revealed she travelled to Virginia in June 1972 with her boyfriend, James Hedgepeth, and two sons – Carl, 4, and James, who was 6 months old.

When Vera Bryant and Hedgepeth arrived, the children were nowhere to be found, White said. But neither was ever reported missing.

Detectives had searched the Lorton area for days but never found another body, said White, especially because they didn’t know to be looking for one.

“The baby may have been discarded along the route, but he has never been located,” she said.

Hedgepeth was convicted of murder in 1962 for an unrelated case and was not the father of either boy, White said.

Police are asking the public for any information that might help the investigation.

“Perhaps somebody witnessed something along that route that day, or maybe Vera or James confided in someone before they died,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said. “Maybe another jurisdiction recovered a 6-month-old baby’s remains and didn’t have any way to tie it to this case.”

Now that Carl Bryant’s body has been identified, police said they hope to place a bench in his honour in the area they know he is buried in.