His grave read “Unknown in life but recognized in death.”
Now, 60 years later, investigators have made good on the missing boy’s epitaph.
In 1961, 15-year-old Daniel Paul “Danny” Armantrout ran away from his fraught home in Tennessee in search of a happier life.
The young hitchhiker’s journey came to an abrupt end when the driver who’d picked him up careened off a bridge and into the Cahaba River on March 27, 1961.
The driver survived, but Armantrout did not — and the boy’s body went unidentified for decades.
But thanks to the work of scientists, genealogists and a tireless band of mystery buffs, Armantrout’s legacy is finally being revealed.
“It’s really a shocker to all of us,” Bibb County, Alabama, Coroner C.W. West said in a statement to AL.com. “I had my doubts at first just because of how long it’s been.
“I am very relieved and excited and overwhelmed,” West added.
“It’s really a shocker to all of us.”
The two travelers hadn’t even exchanged names before the crash. All that was known of Armantrout was that his parents — later identified as Alfred Valentine Armantrout and Virginia Leocadie Berner — had divorced when he was young, and life with his mom and stepfather was difficult.
The boy’s remains were recovered from the river, but authorities didn’t know who he was — nor, apparently, was anyone looking for him. The young man, who stood at about 5-foot-6, had few identifying characteristics: light brown hair, blue eyes and a self-inked tattoo on his left arm that appeared to read, “R.Y.in love” or “R+Y in Love.” He wore a Timex watch and, along with a suitcase full of clothes, carried a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes with a South Carolina tax stamp on it — indicating he may have traveled some distance to end up in Alabama.
About two weeks after the crash, after authorities had exhausted all efforts to ID him, Armantrout was buried at the Centreville Memorial Cemetery in Bibb County with money raised by the pitying local community.
For years, sleuths kept on the trail. An independent agency called Identifinders International would discover that Armantrout had likely hitched rides with at least three drivers during the fateful journey. Some believed he had been put up by relatives in South Carolina and Montevallo, Alabama, where he attempted to find work. Others speculated he intended to enlist in the military or may have been a wayward prison inmate.
The case went cold for 55 years before Bibb County officials were contacted, in 2016, by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, with the organization informing them that funds had been allocated to exhume Armantrout’s body in hopes that modern genetic testing might finally solve the mystery.
His unearthed remains were then taken to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences in Montgomery, where they obtained bone fragments and teeth and sent them off for DNA profiling at the University of North Texas, according to coroner West.
“They couldn’t find any DNA on the outside perimeter of the bone,’’ he said, “so it’s been sitting in north Texas all this time.”
For nearly four more years, no leads were uncovered — until independent detective Colleen Fitzpatrick, an investigator with Identifinders International, contacted the newly elected Coroner West in October 2020. Fitzpatrick said that her group was determined to close the book on what they have declared is the oldest case of a missing child to ever be solved with DNA forensics. The money to embark on the inquiry had been raised predominantly by viewers of a YouTube channel, Gray Hughes Investigates, who had set up a forensic genealogy fund for use by Identifinders.
“They did extensive work there to extract DNA,’’ West said. “They had a lot of complications, but they did not give up.”
They agreed on a new approach to DNA analysis, which saw Armantrout’s parts sent to yet another lab in California — where, finally, they learned who he was.
‘I cannot express enough how grateful I am, as well as many others, to finally be able to put his name on his headstone.’
Then began the work of tracking down any family of Armantrout, who was born on Dec. 28, 1945, in Miami.
An unidentified brother, they learned, now 77, lives in Florida. He had been in the Army when Armantrout ran away and wasn’t able to track down his younger brother when he returned home. Their eldest brother, he told them, had also run away — and remains missing to surviving family. If located, he would be 79. (Danny’s father died in 1973; his mother passed away in 2011.)
The remaining brother was “very emotional” to learn the truth about Armantrout. “He wants to come up and have a memorial service and meet some of the people who worked behind the scenes to locate his brother,” said West.
Gray Hughes Investigates formally announced Armantrout’s identity on Saturday. Now, Identifinders International hopes to locate his still-missing eldest brother.
At the same time, Armantrout’s anonymous grave will be amended to include his full name.
“It’s really amazing,’’ West said. “I cannot express enough how grateful I am, as well as many others, to finally be able to put his name on his headstone. Thank you all for the ones that never gave up on him.”