The 2002 Eastlake Suicide & The Stolen Child Identity
On July 30, 2002, the body of an elderly male recluse was discovered inside an apartment on Erie Road in Eastlake, Lake County, Ohio. The decedent had committed suicide by gunshot eight days earlier on approximately July 23. His apartment was organized with obsessive precision: personal effects were minimal, clothing was neatly folded, and his bank account contained over $82,000.
Authorities initially processed the death under the name on his lease and Social Security card: Joseph Newton Chandler III. However, when probate attorneys attempted to locate heirs, they uncovered a startling fact: the real Joseph Newton Chandler III was an 8-year-old child who had been killed alongside his parents in a catastrophic automobile collision in Weatherford, Texas, on December 21, 1945. The man in Eastlake was an imposter living under a stolen identity.
Federal Investigation & The Paper Trail
United States Marshals Service Supervisory Deputy Peter Elliott took charge of the fugitive identification inquiry. Federal investigators established that in September 1978, the unidentified man had walked into a Social Security Administration office in Rapid City, South Dakota, successfully applying for a fraudulent Social Security card using the deceased boy's birth certificate.
He subsequently obtained an Ohio driver's license, worked as an electrical designer and draftsman for Lubrizol Corporation in Wickliffe, Ohio, and lived as an eccentric phantom for twenty-four years until his death. He possessed no photographs of friends, no correspondence, and spoke to no one about his past.
IGG Breakthrough by DNA Doe Project
In 2016, U.S. Marshals authorized forensic genetic testing. The Cleveland Clinic provided tissue samples preserved from his 2002 autopsy. The DNA Doe Project, led by Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press, extracted an autosomal SNP profile and uploaded it to GEDmatch in 2018.
Genealogists identified shared segments leading to the Nichols family of New Albany, Indiana. In June 2018, federal authorities announced the true identity: the man was Robert Ivan Nichols, born September 12, 1926. Nichols was a decorated World War II U.S. Navy veteran who had received a Purple Heart for injuries sustained on the USS Hancock during a kamikaze attack in 1945. He abandoned his wife, three sons, and home in 1965, vanishing into complete anonymity.