A Missing Person With No Memory: How Investigators Solved the Cold Ca…

This undated photo provided by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office shows a person who at the time of their 2015 death, identified themselves as Seven. Work by members of the Cook County Sheriff’s missing persons initiative found in postmortem the identification of Seven as Reba C. Bailey, a 75-year-old Illinois veteran missing since the 1970s. (Cook County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

CHICAGO (AP) — Buried at the edge of a Chicago Catholic cemetery are an elderly person’s remains marked only by a cement cylinder deep in the ground labeled with the numbers 04985. The person died in 2015 at a nursing home not remembering much, including their own name.

They went by Seven.

Now police specializing in missing people and cold cases have discovered Seven’s identity in one of the most unusual investigations the Cook County sheriff’s office has pursued and one that could change state law. Using post-mortem fingerprints, investigators identified Seven as 75-year-old Reba C. Bailey, an…