In 1990, a man who was thought to have gone over Niagara Falls and was found on the shores of Lake Ontario two years later has finally been identified. On April 8, 1992, the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office responded to the discovery of a badly decomposed and mostly skeletal body that had washed up near the Novelis Plant. It was determined that the person had passed away between six months and five years before the finding. Despite previous unsuccessful attempts to identify the remains, a new DNA sample was collected in April 2022 and submitted to the CODIS database. In February 2024, the sample was identified as a familial match to a family in Buffalo. The individual was confirmed to be Vincent C. Stack, who had gone missing in Niagara Falls State Park around Dec. 4, 1990. It is believed that his remains traveled over 15 miles to the St. Lawrence River and then over 130 miles across Lake Ontario before being discovered in 1992 just outside Oswego.

The family of Vincent was personally informed of the identification by the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office. Detective Constable Sara Mummery from the Niagara Regional Police Service in Ontario, Canada played a crucial role in obtaining the new DNA sample and conducting the comparison. She is actively involved in various missing persons and unidentified remains cases surrounding Lake Ontario. The Sheriff’s Office in Oswego is also working on a similar case from 1983 in hopes of finding a resolution through renewed efforts.