Body clad only in socks is identified 6 years after grisly discovery in Washington lake

A man found floating in a Washington lake six years ago has been identified, police said.

In May 2018, a dead man was found in Lake Washington off Mercer Island, according to the DNA Doe Project.

The man was found naked, only wearing socks, the company said. Officials believed he had been dead for weeks before being discovered in the water.

An autopsy was performed and determined the man’s cause of death was drowning but the manner was unknown, officials said.

The Mercer Island Police Department worked on the case until mid-2021 but didn’t have any leads, officials said.

After reaching out to the DNA Doe Project, a blood sample was taken from the body and a DNA profile was created, investigators said.

The sample got matches but none of them belonged to close relatives, the company said.

Project investigators built a family tree with the closest matches and “traced his family across 11 generations through more than 200 years,” the company said.

With this forensic genetic genealogy, the man was identified as 53-year-old Angel Arroyo Hernandez, the company said. The man had been estranged from his family before his disappearance.

“I find that there is often a lot of interesting information we can get from the small matches and the patterns between them,” team leader Trish Hurturbise said in the release. “In this case we were able to locate a close relative to Mr. Hernandez by exploring matches of his matches.”

This story was originally published February 21, 2024 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Body clad only in socks is identified 6 years after grisly discovery in Washington lake."