Joseph Newton Chandler III

finally identified: Robert Ivan Nichols, alias Joseph Newton Chandler III was a formerly unidentified identity thief who committed suicide in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. After his death, investigators were unable to locate his family and discovered that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old boy who was killed in a car crash in Texas in 1945. The lengths to which Nichols went to hide his identity led to speculation that he was a fugitive. In late 2016, U.S. Marshals announced that forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick had used Y-Chromosome genetic information to link the then-unidentified man to the surname "Nicholas" or "Nichols". On June 21, 2018, it was announced that he had been identified as Robert Ivan Nichols. Background- The real Joseph Chandler: Joseph Newton Chandler III, born in Buffalo, New York, was eight-years-old when he was killed in a traffic accident along with his parents in Texas on December 21, 1945. Reports differ on whether the accident took place in Sherman or Weatherford. Nichols' life and identity theft: Robert Nichols was born on 26 September 1926 in New Albany, Indiana to Silas and Alpha Nichols who had four boys. He joined the US Navy in World War II and served as a firefighter on the USS. Aaron Ward which was bombed by the Japanese in 1945 off Okinawa. He was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He burned his uniforms after the war. Nichols married Laverne Kort in 1947, they had three sons and Nichols worked for General Electric as a draftsman. In 1964, Nichols left his wife and sons and filed for divorce the same year. He moved to Dearborn, Michigan where he told his parents that he worked in the automobile industry. In March 1965 he wrote to his parents that he had moved to Richmond, California and he also sent a letter to his son Phil from Napa, California the same month. His family never heard from him again and they reported him missing in 1965. Nichols worked using his real name until 1976 according to the US Internal Revenue Service. Nichols stole Chandler's identity in September 1978 in Rapid City, South Dakota after applying for a Social Security card, and moved to the Cleveland area shortly after. In 1978 he worked for Edko Company, an engineering business in Cleveland and later worked as an electrical designer and draftsman for Lubrizol, a chemical company headquartered in Wickliffe, Ohio. The company laid him off in 1997. He had claimed to have a sister named "Mary Wilson"; however, the address he provided for her in Columbus, Ohio was fictitious. It was eventually revealed that Nichols was actually born at the same address in New Albany. Nichols was described as being a hermit who only left his home to go to work and eat. Co-workers have said he rarely talked to anyone and appeared to have few or no friends. He also took part in behavior perceived as eccentric, such as listening to white noise for hours, and once drove to an L.L. Bean store in Maine (a drive of at least ten hours and 700 miles/1,100 km) only to promptly turn around and drive back to Ohio after discovering that there were no spots available in the store's parking lot. Suicide: His body was discovered in his apartment on July 30, 2002. He was believed to have killed himself about a week earlier. He had committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a .38-caliber Charter Arms revolver he had purchased a few months earlier. He had recently been diagnosed with colon cancer, which may have influenced his decision to commit suicide. He had $82,000 in his bank account and had listed his co-workers as emergency contacts. His identity theft was discovered when authorities could not find any relatives and discovered that the real Chandler had died decades prior. Authorities were unable to find any usable fingerprints to assist in identification and were only able to get a DNA sample after discovering he had visted a Lake County, Ohio hospital for colon cancer surgery in 2000. Identification: In 2014, at the request of the local police, Ohio US Marshall Peter Elliot began investigating the Chandler case. Using the DNA sample from the Lake County hospital, he checked it against national crime databases but found no matches. In 2016, he asked genetic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick to help. Initially, using Y-chromosome DNA analysis, she and fellow genealogist Margaret Press identified the surname as Nicholas or Nichols. In 2018, using autosomal DNA analysis and GEDmatch, an open-source personal genomics database, they pinpointed a family in New Albany, Indiana, one of whose sons, Robert Nichols, had been reported missing. A DNA test on Phil Nichols, Robert Nichols' son, confirmed that the body was indeed that of Robert Nichols. Theories: Authorities had belived that he was a fugitive of some kind. There were many theories as to what he may have been running from, none of which were confirmed. Some internet sleuths suggested that he might have been the Zodiac killer as he resembled police sketches of the Zodiac and had lived in California, where the Zodiac operated. Another theory was that he was Steven Campbell, an engineer from Cheyenne, Wyoming wanted for attempted murder. Authorities also considered that he mght have been a German soldier or Nazi official from the Second World War that had escaped to the United States. Personal details- Physical description: He was described as a white male aged 65 to 70 who was 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall and weighed 160 pounds (73 kg). He had graying brown hair and gray eyes. Rule-outs- The following people were eliminated as possible identities for the man: -John Barreto -Shirley Campbell -Ron Tammen Jr.