Woman Steps on Skull, 10-Year Mystery Begins

In 2004, a young mother skidded off Long Island's Northern State Parkway—and, upon exiting her car to get help, stepped on a human skull. In the almost 10 years since, New York police have been mystified as to who the man is and what happened to him. Now they're asking the public for help solving what they call the "Members Only case," named such because the man—his entire, fully clothed skeleton had been stuffed into a plastic bag and was eventually unearthed—was wearing a Members Only jacket. That likely places his death in the 1980s, when the jackets were popular, NBC News reports.

He was also wearing bellbottoms, tube socks, and a $500 watch; the date on the newest coin found in his pocket was 1974, but there was no cash in his money clip. Investigators initially thought he might be a child—he stood just 5'1"—but a forensic dental exam put him between ages 35 and 55. Now they think his height could help them solve the case; they'll focus on missing person records for anyone around that height. "We want to identify him to give somebody, somewhere, closure," says the senior investigator, who kept working on the case himself after it went cold, and is now giving it a fresh look with a new investigator. "Maybe there’s a kid out there who wants to know what happened to his father." (More cold cases stories.)