Coroner’s office identifies man 55 years later after exhuming his body from cemetery

PAGE, N.D. (KVLY/Gray News) - The victim of a 1970 homicide investigation has been identified nearly 55 years after his suspicious death.

According to the Cass County coroner’s office, it exhumed a body from St. James Cemetery that had a headstone marked “unknown male” on July 1.

During the exhumation, a denture plate was recovered from the skeletal remains labeled “Tate W. H” with a number “20506932” printed underneath.

With the help of genealogical and archival resources, investigators traced the denture back to a World War II enlistment record for William Howard Tate.

The coroner’s office said it was able to positively identify the body as Tate based on those records and subsequent analysis.

Officials said Tate’s body was found on Oct. 27, 1970, near railroad tracks outside of Page.

The Cass County Sheriff’s office investigated the case as a possible homicide, with evidence suggesting that he had been assaulted, robbed, and either thrown from the train or had fallen off of it.

The cause of the man’s death included fractures of the ribs and cervical vertebrae.

Authorities said no arrests were made in the case, and the man was unable to be identified at the time of his death, with him being buried at the St. James Cemetery without any identification.

The coroner’s office said it wanted to properly identify the victim and is working with Cass County Veteran Services to have a new headstone with the man’s name.

Additional analysis of the remains is being conducted by Dr. Jennifer Bengtson, a professor overseeing the project at Southeast Missouri State University. The effort is funded by private donors who support the university’s anthropology department.