For more than four decades, the identity of a man found in the ocean off Atlantic City remained a mystery.
Now, advances in DNA technology and investigative genetic genealogy have finally given him a name.
New Jersey State Police announced that human remains recovered about a mile off the Atlantic City shoreline in May 1981 have been identified as Glen Napoleon Burbage, a retired U.S. Coast Guard chief warrant officer from Charleston, South Carolina. Burbage was 59 years old when he disappeared.
Burbage had flown from South Carolina to Atlantic City in March 1981 and was never heard from again. According to investigators, he had been missing since March 23 of that year. Nearly two months later, on May 22, a group of recreational boaters discovered a man’s body in the Atlantic Ocean approximately one mile offshore from Raleigh Avenue in Atlantic City. Authorities at the time believed the man had been dead for several weeks.
Despite investigators’ efforts, there was no identification with the body, and traditional methods failed to determine who he was.
DNA testing performed over the years also failed to produce a match through the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the national DNA database used by law enforcement. Without additional leads, the man became known simply as “Atlantic City John Doe,” and the case remained unresolved for decades.
That changed with the growing use of investigative genetic genealogy, a method that combines DNA analysis with genealogical records and family-tree research to identify unknown individuals.
In 2026, investigators developed a more detailed SNP genetic profile from the unidentified man’s remains and turned to the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey for assistance.
The case became part of a collaborative educational effort involving Ramapo College, the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Technology Sydney and the New South Wales Police Force in Australia. Researchers used genetic relatives connected to the unidentified man’s DNA to essentially work backward and build a family tree.
Ramapo students and investigators participating in the project eventually arrived at Burbage as a possible identity.
“For 45 years, Glen Burbage had a name and a family, even though investigators did not yet know who he was,” Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center Director Cairenn Binder said in a statement reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. She added that the technology allows investigators to return to cases that once appeared to have exhausted the forensic tools available at the time.
Finding a possible name, however, was only the beginning.
New Jersey State Police worked with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to locate a member of Burbage’s family and obtain a reference DNA sample. A direct familial DNA comparison performed by the New Jersey State Police Central Laboratory conclusively confirmed that the remains recovered off Atlantic City in 1981 belonged to Burbage.
The investigation received assistance from several organizations, including Othram Inc., Ramapo College’s genetic genealogy center, South Carolina authorities and the New Jersey State Police Central Laboratory. Federal Missing and Unidentified Human Remains grant funding has also helped New Jersey investigators apply newer technologies to unresolved cases involving missing people and unidentified remains.
The identification is another example of how genetic genealogy is rewriting decades-old cold cases.
Unlike conventional forensic DNA searches, investigative genetic genealogy can use matches involving more distant relatives. Researchers can then study public genealogical records and family connections to narrow down possible identities before law enforcement seeks a direct DNA comparison to confirm the result.
Ramapo College’s program has already helped identify people in numerous long-unsolved cases. In another South Jersey mystery, the center helped identify remains discovered at several locations along the Jersey Shore between 1995 and 2013 as those of Capt. Henry Goodsell, whose schooner was lost off Brigantine in 1844. That identification came more than 180 years after his death.
While one major question surrounding the Atlantic City case has finally been answered, another remains.
Authorities have not determined what happened to Burbage after he arrived in Atlantic City in March 1981 or how he died. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance and death remain under investigation.
Anyone with information about Burbage’s disappearance or death is asked to contact the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at missingpinformation@njsp.gov. Anonymous tips are accepted.
Forty-five years after a group of boaters encountered an unidentified man in the waters off Atlantic City, investigators may still have questions about how his life ended.
But at last, Atlantic City John Doe is no longer nameless.
