Skeletal remains found at Jersey Shore identified as 19th century boat captain

There’s been a break in 30-year-old cold case mystery at the Jersey Shore after experts confirmed skeletal remains found on three beaches belonged to a 19th-century boat captain.

There’s been a break in 30-year-old cold case mystery at the Jersey Shore after experts confirmed skeletal remains found on three beaches belonged to a 19th-century boat captain.

The bones from a leg, arm and fragments of a cranium discovered on the beaches of Ocean City, Margate and Longport between 1995 and 2013 had yielded no answers until now.

Authorities said the remains belong to 29-year-old Captain Henry Goodsell, who died at sea 181 years ago.

Advances in DNA technology first tied the bones to the same person after cold case detectives with the state police turned to the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey last year.

“Our job was to figure out who that individual was that the bones belonged to,” Cairenn Binder of the college’s IGG Center said.