Frozen human remains that were found in a cave on the Appalachian Trail nearly five decades ago have finally been identified as a Montgomery County man who had died from a drug overdose before a pair of hikers located his body, the Berks County Coroner's Office said Tuesday.
Nicholas Paul Grubb, 27, had long been referred to as "Pinnacle Man" because his remains were found at a high point of the trail known as the Pinnacle in Albany Township, which is about 65 miles northwest of his hometown of Fort Washington. Grubb's body was found in January 1977 during one of the coldest winters in Pennsylvania's history, when temperatures had averaged in the single digits, authorities said.
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On Tuesday, Berks County Coroner John Fielding III said the breakthrough in the cold case was achieved using an old fingerprint card that was recovered by an investigator earlier this month. The discovery enabled authorities to identify Grubb after past attempts to do so with DNA and other methods had failed.
The hikers found Grubb's remains on Jan. 16, 1977. The next day, an autopsy was conducted at Reading Hospital and it was determined Grubb had died from an overdose of phenobarbital and pentobarbital, which are both barbiturate drugs. At the time, the medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was suicide. Grubb, whose body went unclaimed, was buried at Potter's Field in Berks County.
At the time the remains were discovered, investigators said there were no signs of foul play. Grubb was described as a white male between 25 and 35 years old. He had a full beard and a scar in the shape of the letter "T" on the left side of his chin. He was found wearing Wrangler blue jeans and a buckskin jacket with tassels on the sleeves and torso. He also wore hiking boots and appeared to have gone to the trail prepared to handle the harsh elements.
Over the ensuing decades, the coroner's office tried to determine Grubb's identity using various technologies that had emerged with advances in forensics. Grubb's body was exhumed from Potter's Field in 2019 and bone samples were sent to labs on two separate occasions for DNA extraction. Efforts to match Grubb's' DNA with records in a national database of unidentified remains did not yield results. Investigators also tried a method known as craniofacial reconstruction, which attempts to model faces using skeletal remains.
The case took a turn earlier this month when an FBI expert located an original, ink-and-paper fingerprint card that contained Grubb's prints, the Reading Eagle reported. In years past, the coroner's office had been relying on a copy of the card that was too deteriorated to make a definitive match. The original card was found in records that were not immediately accessible, Fielding said. Fingerprint technology has since advanced to use digital scanners.
Once the fingerprint card was located, Pinnacle Man's prints were submitted to a national database on Aug. 12. A match with Grubb was made within an hour using another copy of his fingerprints that were on record from police in Colorado, where Grubb had once lived and had an interaction with law enforcement.
"For 47 years, this man remained unidentified," Fielding said. "A nameless figure in a long-forgotten case. But today I’m honored to announce that through the unyielding determination of federal, state and local agencies, the Berks County Coroner’s Office has confirmed the identity of this individual."
Investigators are now working to learn more about Grubb's life in the years before his death. Authorities have made contact with his family and learned that he once served in the Pennsylvania National Guard in the early 1970s. The coroner's office plans to transfer Grubb's remains to his family to be buried at a place of their choosing.
Although Grubb's cause of death was deemed to be suicide, investigators now hope to determine how the drugs got into his system before he died on the Appalachian Trail. The investigation will remain open until a final determination is made.
If you need help: Call or text 988 to reach the national suicide and crisis lifeline.