Sergeant James Lee Haynes, 32, disappeared on December 7, 1963, while hitchhiking from Baltimore to his parents’ home in Saulsville, Wyoming County, West Virginia. He was travelling to spend Christmas with family and was last seen in his Army Class A uniform after a stop at a tavern in Raleigh County. Reports say Haynes was involved in an altercation with three local men; investigators allege the men pursued him, struck him on Bolt Mountain Road, backed a car over him multiple times, put his body in a trunk and buried it on Bolt Mountain.

Searches turned up some of Haynes’s personal effects: his chain was found nailed to a tree, and his billfold and bloody rags were hidden inside a stump. In 1971 one suspect, William Lundy Trump, was arrested and charged with murder; the charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. Two other named suspects were James Paul Cozort, who was questioned after relocating to Oregon but not charged, and James Floyd Cox, who police could not locate.

Authorities say the case remains unsolved and that locating Haynes’s remains is the priority to give his family closure. If anyone knew Sgt. Haynes, his movements that December, or the men named in connection with the case, please come forward with information.