Body ID’d 26 years after killing

WEWAHITCHKA, Fla. – An Internet posting and DNA testing have led to the identification of a body found 26 years ago in a wooded area of the Florida Panhandle as that of a Washington state man.

Gulf County authorities said they now will try to find out who killed Rocky Lewis Berry, probably 18 or 19 when he died, announcing Monday that they had positively identified him as the victim. His body was found in February 1979.

His sister, Brenda Quiroz, spent years scouring newspapers, Web sites and vital statistics looking for her brother, checking out every report of an unidentified body being found.

She searched in vain until early 2003, when Gulf County sheriff’s Investigator Jake Richards played a hunch and posted information about the remains on a Web site.

“We’ve got some closure now,” Quiroz said from her home in Zillah, Wash. “It’s been more than 25 years, and we never quit looking for him.”

Richards also consulted a Florida State University anthropologist who thought the remains were those of a young white male and found the victim had suffered a broken arm and rib about two years before his death.

Most revealing to Quiroz, however, were forensic details that showed a history of foot paralysis.

“It’s called Charcot-Marie-Tooth,” Quiroz said. “The men in my family have it. It started in my brother before he hit puberty, and as soon as I read that on the Web site, I just knew it was Rocky.”

She said her brother had left Washington in May 1978 to avoid returning to a boy’s home in Tacoma. He hitchhiked to California and then Florida, staying with relatives in Fort Lauderdale, Quiroz said.

“I have no idea how he ended up in Gulf County,” she said.