EASTLAKE, OH -- He's been a man of mystery for decades, but we'll soon find out his true identity.
Who is Joseph Newton Chandler III and why did he steal the identity of a 9-year-old boy?
U.S. Marshals and Eastlake police have cracked the case. They say they'll announce the man's true identity during a news conference Thursday at 1 p.m.
The man had been living as Joseph Newton Chandler III until his death in 2002. He died by suicide in his Eastlake apartment at age 65, leading investigators to discover he'd stolen the identity of a 9-year-old killed in a Texas car crash.
"You don't just assume the identity of a deceased 9-year-old boy and live that life throughout your lifetime. He was running from something," U.S. Marshal Pete Elliot told WKYC in 2015. "I can't say what that thing was he was running from, but I would suspect, based on my experiences, it's something that was pretty bad in the past."
In 1978, the mystery man used the real Joseph Chandler's personal information to obtain a Social Security card in Rapid City, South Dakota. Not long after, he moved to Ohio and began working at Lubrizol.
Theories on Chandler's true identity have circulated the internet for years, the most popular being his likeness to sketches of the infamous Zodiac Killer who terrorized Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s.
By all accounts, the man living as Chandler was a highly intelligent loner, neat, and orderly. He also made electrical devices, like the Zodiac Killer, and was described as eccentric by most who encountered him.
"Joe was very shy," a former co-worker told WKYC in 2015. "He didn't want to be bothered by anybody. He didn't want to talk to other people. He was pretty deep into what he had to do for work."
Another internet theory pondered if Chandler was Stephen Campbell, an engineer from Cheyenne, Wyoming wanted for attempted murder in 1983.
Elliot told WKYC he looked at possible leads from all around the country and outside U.S. borders, such as Australia and British Columbia. He even admitted that investigators looked into Nazi war criminals who have disappeared.
U.S. Marshals in 2016 identified a possible last name for Chandler. A forensic genealogist linked the mystery man to the last name Nicholas or Nichols by using Y chromosome genealogy. But until now, no answers have been provided.
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