With the help of a state forensic anthropologist, investigators identified the body found at Fort Worden State Park on Jan. 13 as a man from Port Townsend who had been missing for over a year.

The man was identified as Mitchell Dean Hamilton, 57, who was reported missing Oct. 20, 2017,  Jefferson County Sheriff’s Detective Shane Stevenson said.

“He was a regular at the Spruce Goose Cafe,” Stevenson said. “He came in there all the time. One of his friends there reported him as missing to the sheriff’s office, but we really didn’t have any leads.”

After he was initially reported missing, Stevenson had begun interviewing Hamilton’s friends and family, who said it would not have been unusual for him to disappear for a few months and then come back.

But several months passed with no contact from Hamilton. Searching a storage unit at Glen Cove where Hamilton had been living brought more questions than answers.

His car had been left with the title and the keys, Stevenson said, and his hard drive had been removed from his computer.

“In the storage unit there was a piece of paper with his email on it,” Stevenson said. “His friend found it and was able to log on to his email on her phone and she saw that he had recently ordered hammock rope.”

Stevenson also found numerous ropes with sophisticated knots tied in the storage unit.

But after talking with friends and family, searching through Hamilton’s left belongings and retracing his steps, the case grew cold.

Then, one year and three months later, a body was found in a hammock nearly 50 feet up in a tree at Fort Worden.

The death was ruled a suicide by asphyxiation, County Prosecutor James Kennedy said. But the state of the body showed it had been there for several months,  and that meant that finding a positive identification would be a challenge, he said.

“When they found the body at Fort Worden, it didn’t seem like there was anything criminal about it, so my mind immediately went to maybe this is Mitchell Dean Hamilton,” Stevenson said.

The hammock had multiple sophisticated knots that matched the ones Stevenson had found when searching Hamilton’s storage unit, the detective said. And his clothes matched descriptions Stevenson had gotten from Hamilton’s friends.

“As they did the autopsy, they were able to find hardware in the upper and lower jaw,” Stevenson said. “That indicated that the jaw had been broken (before), and he had had surgery at some point.”

Stevenson asked Hamilton’s friends if they remembered him ever having a broken jaw. One friend said he had gone to Bremerton for surgery on his jaw about five years ago.

After locating Hamilton’s medical records, Stevenson and Port Townsend Police Department Detective Jon Stuart brought X-rays from Hamilton’s previous surgery and pictures from the autopsy to Kathy Taylor, the only forensic anthropologist employed by the state.

“The skeleton is unique to the individual,” Taylor said. “The reality is, we can identify someone from any X-ray of their body.”

Taylor is the state’s bone expert. When counties need help identifying bodies, she steps in to compare bones.

“With this case, the sheriff’s department needed some help with the identification,” Taylor said. “They were lucky enough to have a tentative identification. They were able to obtain X-rays on that tentative identification (from the medical records).”

Bone structure is as unique to each person as their fingerprint, Taylor said.

“I took X-rays post-mortem to do a comparison,” she said.

Skull bones, such as the jaw and the frontal sinus, are some of the easiest to compare because of their individualized shapes. Past marks from surgeries are also an easy indication of a match, Taylor said.

The comparisons of Hamilton’s post-mortem X-rays with the X-rays from his jaw surgery were exact, Stevenson said.

Hamilton’s family was notified and is making funeral arrangements, Stevenson said.

But there are still a few unanswered questions in the case. Hamilton’s wallet and phone were never found. And living four miles away from Fort Worden, it is unknown whether Hamilton walked to the park or found some other way to get there.

“The last evidence of him showing activity was Oct. 6, 2017, when he used his bank card at the Port Hadlock QFC,” Stevenson said. “I suspect that, by the time he was reported missing, he was already dead.”

Stevenson suspected that Hamilton, who had been wearing grey pants and a grey jacket, did not want to be found.

The detective described Hamilton as a loner with a few close friends, such as the ones from the Spruce Goose.

“The people that did know him knew him a long time,” Stevenson said. “They loved him.”