Murder of George Seitz

There were no leads and the investigation was placed in the cold cases file, abandoned for decades.^[3] However, in early 2019, a woman in her 50s informed the police that as an 11-year-old girl,^[4] she had seen her mother's companion dismember and bury a body.^[5] The police used dogs to scour the property where she had lived at the time, and found human remains, but were unable to identify the victim.^[3] Only the pelvis and part of the torso were found.^[1]

Using material from the remains, investigators generated a genetic profile. Two years later, still unable to identify Steitz as the victim, the FBI were called upon,^[1] as well as an external forensic genealogy laboratory, Othram.^[3][6] Detectives were then able to find close relatives and identified Seitz through DNA samples.^[3]

Investigators identified the man mentioned by the informant as Martin Motta.^[1][3] He and his brother had owned the barbershop,^[7] where Seitz visited when he disappeared, located only a few city blocks from Seitz' home.^[3][5] He was arrested, arraigned,^[3] and indicted by a grand jury in November 2021.^[1][3][5]

Motta pled guilty in October 2022, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on November 7.^[8]

• List of solved missing person cases