GRAND ISLE, La. — After nearly 40 years, an infamous cold case in Sabine Parish has been solved. The bones found at the bottom of a well near Many, La. have been identified as those of a Grand Isle man who had been missing since 1984.
Authorities positively identified the body of 58-year-old Lester Rome Monday, the Sabine Parish Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post.
Rome was reported missing from Grand Isle in 1984.
Two years later came the "Man in the Well" case.
In April 1986, a landowner in Sabine Parish found skeletal remains in a well on his property. Some of the bones were recovered, but not enough to make a positive ID.
The case went cold for decades until 2013 when LSU's Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory made a possible connection between the Man in the Well case and Rome's disappearance.
The skeletal remains that were recovered from the well had shotgun pellets embedded in the pelvic area. That matched information about Rome, who had been shot in the abdomen with a shotgun years before he went missing.
But despite the promising lead, no more progress was made until 2021. In February, the current owner of the land where the well sits gave permission to detectives to conduct another search.
While their first February attempt to recover more bones with a mechanical grabber were unsuccessful, a second attempt in April using the Central Sabine Fire Department's confined space entry team had more luck.
That team recovered more bones and some other evidence from the bottom of the well.
Monday, the cases were confirmed to be one and the same: the man in the well was in fact, Lester Rome.
His next of kin was notified by the parish coroner's office, but Sabine Parish detectives are still investigating the case to determine who may have been responsible for Rome's death.
Shreveport-area TV station KTBS reports that the items pulled from the well with Rome's bones were what allowed the coroner's office to positively ID him.
Sabine Parish Detective Chris Abrahams told the station that he couldn't tell them what had been pulled from the well because he was confident they were evidence that could lead to an arrest soon.
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