Texas police solved the Lone Star State’s oldest missing persons case just over five decades later, and brought a long-awaited sense of closure to the young victim’s older brother.
Norman Prater, 16, was reported missing on Jan. 16, 1973 after a late-night out with his friends in Dallas. He never returned home, and police never came across any meaningful leads — until now.
The Dallas Police Department announced Friday that it positively matched an unidentified teenager killed in a hit-and-run on July 9, 1973 to Norman.
The teen was killed in the crash on Highway 35 in Rockport, Texas — roughly 380 miles south of Dallas. Authorities in Aransas County and local news outlets were not able to confirm his identity at the time, and the seemingly random death eventually faded into obscurity.
Detective Ryan Dalby, a member of the police department’s Missing Persons Unit, was stunned when a medical examiner in Aransas County reached out to him and flagged the 1973 crash. He said he came across it while reviewing antiquated files and was wondering if there could be a link between the unidentified victim and Norman.
“I pull up the file, and I look at it, I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?!’” Dalby told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
The medical examiner retrieved a full file and the pair employed help from a forensic analyst to pick out “points of reference on the face,” which led them to believe there was “a high probability of the person that was found down there being Norman Prater,” Dalby told the outlet.
“I’m like, I’m looking at the photos by the side by side. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m with them. There’s a high probability this could be who we’re looking for,’” Dalby said.
The detective, however, wasn’t going to risk misidentifying the slain teen, who wasn’t afforded the chance to be properly laid to rest for 52 years. He reached out to Norman’s older brother, Isaac Prater, in hopes he could fill in the gaps.
“He answers the phone and is like, ‘Who is this?’ I’m like, ‘It’s Detective Dalby with the Dallas Police Department.’ He goes, ‘I’ve waited 52 years for this phone call. Please tell me you have something’,” Dalby recounted to the outlet.
Prater was at the Dallas police headquarters the following day.
“I showed him recognition software that they used, and he just looks at me and he goes, ‘You can close the case, that’s my brother, case is done,’” Dalby said.
“He finally has closure. He has closure after 52 years of wondering where his brother is.”
Dalby told Fox 4 that Isaac was able to trace every detail on his baby brother’s face, ranging from a scar on his lip he got from a violent dog and another on his eyebrow sustained during a fight.
It’s unclear what exactly Norman was doing during the six-month stretch between his disappearance and death, or how he wound up so far from home. Dalby told the outlet he suspects Norman may have hitchhiked his way around the state, which was popular during the 1970s.
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