I exhumed my dad’s grave and found the buried body belonged to a stranger

For years, Mark Wells believed that he’d been tasked with trying to solve the mystery of how his father died. Instead, he ended up uncovering a different mystery altogether.

The Californian paid for DNA testing on remains that had been buried as his father, Dale Wayne Wells, hoping modern science might succeed where decades of investigation had failed. The results stunned him. The body his family had buried and mourned since 1985 didn’t belong to his father at all…

That discovery has left Mark, now 52, searching for answers that seem further away than ever. Not only is there still no explanation for what happened to Dale, there’s now the added question of who was actually buried there in his place.

‘I want to know why that person is buried in the ground instead of my father,’ Mark said. ‘Most importantly, I want to know if my father is alive. I don’t know if he has passed away. I want answers.’

Dale was 38 when he disappeared back in February 1985. Months later, a body believed to be his was found in woodland near Colfax, California, around a quarter of a mile from the home of his then-wife.

According to Mark, the remains had been badly damaged by animals during the eight months they lay undiscovered. His grandfather eventually found the body and contacted police.

Despite the discovery, investigators were never able to determine exactly how the man had died. Mark says he was told that three bullets were found near the body, leading some people to suspect that Dale had died by suicide. But no official conclusion was ever reached.

As a child, Mark knew very little of that uncertainty. He’d been told that his dad had died in a hunting accident and just accepted that explanation for years.

The first crack in the story appeared when he was preparing to join the Marine Corps at 18. Among the paperwork he needed was his father’s death certificate, which listed the cause of death as ‘unknown’.

After confronting his mother, he learned that much of what he believed about his father’s death wasn’t actually true. From that point onwards, he became increasingly determined to find out what had really happened.

His efforts brought very little real progress, however. In the early 2000s he visited the sheriff’s office seeking information, but says he was effectively told there was nothing that could be done.

Friends and relatives also struggled to believe that Dale had taken his own life. The more Mark looked into the case, the less convinced he became that anyone truly understood what had happened in those final months.

Eventually he decided that DNA testing might provide the breakthrough that investigators never found. In August 2019 he paid to have the remains exhumed. The results arrived in May 2022.

Scientists compared DNA from the exhumed bones with a sample from Dale’s sister, Sharon Service. The conclusion was clear. According to the laboratory report, Dale could be excluded as the source of the bone sample.

‘I was so mad when I got the news,’ Mark said. ‘I was thinking, number one, that isn’t my father in the ground, and number two, does that mean he is still alive…?’

The finding transformed what had long been treated as a death investigation into a missing persons case.

Police have still not identified the man whose remains were buried under Dale’s name, while Dale himself is once again officially listed as missing. More than 40 years after he vanished, his son remains no closer to discovering where he went or what became of him.

A spokesperson for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said the remains had originally been identified through dental records before being released to family members. Following the DNA findings, Dale’s missing persons case has since been reopened.

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