Pueblo County sheriff’s detectives have verified the identity of a man whose skeletal remains were found in a field just north of Pueblo in November 2000.

Marvin Majors of Oklahoma was 34 years old and believed to have been homeless, camping in a field north of the Walking Stick development, according to a Thursday news release from the Sheriff’s Office. 

From 2000 to 2020, little emerged about the remains. In 2001, a sculptor from the University of Colorado reconstructed Majors’ face into a clay bust. After the release of the reconstruction to the media, a rancher reported seeing Majors camping on his property in August 2000, three months before his body was found. The rancher said Majors told him he was traveling from New Mexico to Denver, but did not share his name. 

The case was kept on the back burner until 2021, when detectives took another look using advanced DNA technology, according to the news release.

Detectives analyzed DNA from an item taken from the campsite where the remains were found; the DNA sample was submitted to a genetic genealogy database in 2023. 

In 2024, Majors’ DNA was matched with a distant family member, and this week, it was matched with a sibling’s sample. 

The family of Majors said he lived a “transient” lifestyle and they hadn’t seen him since the late 1990s but always wondered where he went, according to the news release. 

Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero announced the solving of the 25-year-old case and congratulated detectives and collaborative efforts involved in closing the case.

“The years of dedication, diligence and perseverance by our detectives demonstrate that no matter how old a case is, they are committed to solving it. This was somebody’s family member, and our team went above and beyond to identify him and to bring some closure to his family,” Lucero stated in the release.