The unnamed · the Howard Johnson John Doe, and the names that came back

JUNE 9, 1985, AND THE IDENTIFICATIONS OF 2020

The Howard Johnson John Doe: On June 9, 1985, a family walking their dog behind the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge — a hotel that stood in the area of Cleveland Road and State Road 933, and is no longer there — smelled something terrible, went to investigate, and found a dead man. He was badly decomposed, and it was determined that he had been shot to death. No identification was ever made. He was buried in Tutt Cemetery under no name, and for more than thirty-five years the St. Joseph County Police Department has been working to identify the "Howard Johnson John Doe" — the county's one standing unidentified-persons case in the official record. On September 15, 2025, the county police, the Coroner's Office, and other agencies exhumed his remains from Tutt Cemetery for genetic genealogy analysis, Detective Allan Barnes of the county police leading the effort — in the department's stated purpose, an attempt to give him his name back. As of this section's writing, he has not got it back: the case stands open on the one question that precedes all others in it, which is who he was.

The woman by the creek — a name restored, a death unexplained: On Saturday, November 28, 2020, at about 11:54 a.m., a citizen discovered skeletal remains along a creek bed in the 24000 block of Stanton Road in North Liberty and called the county police. The Coroner's Office was notified, the Metro Homicide Unit was activated under its protocol, and an autopsy was conducted in Fort Wayne. For five months the remains had no name. On April 22, 2021, the Metro Homicide Unit announced that its investigators, with the assistance of staff at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine in Kalamazoo, had positively identified the remains as Rachel Zentz, 43 years old, formerly of LaPaz, Indiana. The same release states the rest of her standing in one line: the cause and manner of death has been ruled as undetermined. The identification closed; the death did not. Anyone with information was asked to contact Michiana Crime Stoppers or the unit — and that undetermined ruling is where her file stands.

The man on Broadway — a name restored, and no crime: On July 16, 2020, South Bend officers responded to 613 East Broadway Street on a report of human remains discovered inside the residence. Investigators were told that a man named Christopher Krebs had been living at the residence but had not been seen for several weeks; a relative gave a DNA sample, and on August 25, 2020, the Indiana State Police Laboratory returned a positive DNA comparison. The Coroner's Office and the Metro Homicide Unit identified the remains as Christopher Krebs, 64. The unit's release states plainly that no evidence was found indicating the death was the result of a homicide. His case is carried here in one line because it closed the other way: an unnamed set of remains that got its name back, and was never a crime at all.

What is not there: Beyond this one man of 1985, no currently unidentified decedent from this city or county stands in the official record reached. The Coroner's Office publishes no unidentified-persons list that this research could reach, and the national aggregators to which such cases are usually posted carry no St. Joseph County, Indiana case that this research found. The county's unnamed record is the Howard Johnson John Doe, and the two identifications of 2020–21 above — one of which, Zentz's, remains an open death under an undetermined ruling.

Sources:

1. WNDU, Michiana Unsolved: "Identifying the 'Howard Johnson John Doe'" — the discovery of June 9, 1985, the location, and the county police department's decades of work on the identification.
2. Forensic Magazine and the ISHI News summary (September 15, 2025), reporting the county's announcement — the shooting determination, the burial at Tutt Cemetery, the exhumation of September 15, 2025, and Detective Allan Barnes's role.
3. St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit press releases (St. Joseph County DocumentCenter): the skeletal-remains release of November 28, 2020, and the identification update of April 22, 2021 (Rachel Zentz; cause and manner undetermined); the death-investigation release of August 27, 2020 (Christopher Krebs, identified August 25, 2020; no evidence of homicide).