The Mystery of Wykoff’s John Doe

On the night of July 6, 1947, an unidentified man was struck and killed by a freight train near the Wykoff depot. He carried no identification, and no one seemed to know who he was.

But his fingerprints told a much stranger story.

Authorities connected the dead man to seven different names, used during arrests stretching from New York and Pennsylvania to Iowa and Minnesota. One of those names—Oar Diehl—would provide tantalizing clues about his past, including a birth date and hometown. Yet despite the trail he left across the country, his true identity remained a mystery.

Who was the man who died on the tracks in Wykoff? Why had he spent decades traveling under different names? And could the clues left behind finally reveal who he really was?

This week on Roots & Riddles, we follow the paper trail of a man who had seven names—but died without one.