January 7th, 1990.

Davies County, Kentucky.

The nude body of a white male who appears to be in his 30s is found in a remote wooded

area.

The victim has been shot and severely beaten and his hands and feet

were removed, but since he cannot be identified, he becomes known as the Davies County

John Doe. Seventeen years later, investigators announced that the John Doe has been identified as

Scott Morris, a 14-year-old boy who went missing from Indiana in 1978, but this turns out to be

a mistake.

Finally, in April of 2024, the decedent is correctly identified as 37-year-old William Matthews,

but his murder remains unsolved. After that, the trail went cold. Oh, uh, uh, and uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

I'm your host Robin Warder and on this episode we're going to be covering a pair of cold cases, the 1990 murder of William Matthews,

and the 1978 disappearance of Scott Morris.

On the surface, there would be no reason to assume these two cases are connected, but they wound up being linked together in a truly unusual fashion.

Over the years, I've received a couple of requests to cover the story of an unidentified decedent known as the Davies County John Doe who was brutally

murdered in Kentucky in 1990. While just over three months before this episode's

release it was announced that DNA testing and genetic genealogy

had finally identified the victim as a 37-year-old Louisville resident named William Matthews.

Of course, while it's wonderful that William got his name back this is still

technically an unsolved cold case since a new investigation is currently underway

to try and figure out who was responsible for killing him. Now if you're wondering how Scott Morris fits into this,

he was a 14-year-old boy who went missing from Indianapolis, Indiana in August of 1978,

...