“Unidentified Chicago Veteran Found Dead in Nursing Home Identified as Reba C. Bailey, Cold Case Solved by Sheriff’s Office”

Accident – Death – Obituary News : 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 Illinois veteran missing since the 1970s. The breakthrough is bringing closure to generations of relatives and friends.

But whether they knew the name or the numeral, the investigation has unearthed more mysteries about how Reba, a Women’s Army Corps veteran raised in a large family, became homeless with no recollection, aside from wanting to be identified as a man called Seven. Public records, interviews, newspapers, and police work have offered some insight into the person with two lives, even with so much still unknown.

Investigators say the next step is to honor them with a new gravestone and military honors.

“That’s a horrible circumstance that someone could die and no one knows who they are. That’s why we pursue these cases so strongly, out of dignity,” said Commander Jason Moran, who oversees the sheriff’s missing persons unit. “A person deserves a name.”

A CURIOUS COLD CASE

The case of Seven Doe — the name often appearing in official records — came to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart last year. His office has gained notoriety for work on cold cases, including identifying victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and leading efforts to locate missing women statewide. Seven’s case was unusual from the start.

The unidentified body belonged to an elderly woman who died of natural causes in an assisted living facility in Chicago. She was a ward of the state because she had no legal name or family she could remember.

“We never had anything like that before,” Dart said of Seven being unidentified both in life and death. “This one is different and it just kept getting more different.”

The cause of death was heart disease with diabetes and dementia as contributing factors, according to the Cook County medical examiner. Fingerprints taken at the time of death in November 2015 were run against police databases as is customary. There was no match for a criminal record. She was buried at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on the city’s Far South Side in a section for unclaimed people. The medical examiner marked it as the 4,985th case of the year.

Dart’s office usually takes up unsolved cases at least three years after they’ve gone cold. By then, it’s unlikely they’ll interfere with active investigations. With foul play ruled out, investigators started by running Seven’s fingerprints against more state and federal databases, including military records. There was a match. Investigators found 1961 Army records for Reba.

They then tried to find relatives she was last in contact with in the 1970s and identified five deceased siblings, most recently a sister who passed in 2007. They also located more than half a dozen living nieces and nephews, a marriage record, and evidence of traumatic events that would offer a window into her life.

“Human identification is a mix of science and circumstance,” Moran, who has been with the sheriff’s department for more than two decades, said of his work. “It makes it very interesting to learn about who they were. The passage of time creates these difficulties. So we do the best we can to piece together who they were in life.”

FAMILY FOLKLORE AND FACTS

Most of Reba’s living relatives — nephews and nieces in Florida, Alabama, and Illinois — never met her. But they had heard of her. Reba’s disappearance is part of family lore, something discussed at gatherings and reunions. So when Rick Bailey got a call from investigators about his long-lost aunt, he was “totally in shock.”

Bailey, a Florida funeral home director, is named after his father, Reba’s older brother Richard, who died in 2000.

“My dad had searched for years to try and find his sister,” said Bailey, who’s 65 and believes Reba’s siblings would celebrate the news. “They would all be thrilled if they were here.”

He and other relatives have helped investigators learn more about Reba’s early years. She was born in 1940 in Danville, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) south of Chicago, the daughter of a carpenter who often moved for work. Census records show multiple addresses for the family in Illinois and Alabama.

Tragedy hit Reba’s life at age 10 when she lost her mother in a car wreck that also left her, her father, and her brother injured. According to an October 1950 Chicago Tribune brief, Reba’s father backed up “to pick up a suitcase he saw beside the highway” when they were struck by another car. Edna Bailey, 46, died at a hospital.

Other records about Reba’s youth are sparse. Most of the people who would have answers are dead. Her photo doesn’t appear in the yearbooks of public or private Catholic schools in Danville. The building in Chicago’s Gold Coast where 1950 Census records show her family lived no longer exists. Her name doesn’t appear in a nearby high school’s yearbooks. She worked stints as an elevator operator at a private club and as a sales clerk, according to military records which also list her hobbies as swimming, bowling, golf, and photography.

About a decade after the accident, she joined the Women’s Army Corps, serving in Alabama, Texas, and California. Military records show she was awarded a medal for good conduct and honorably discharged in 1962 “due to marriage.” Around that time at age 21, she married John H. Bilberry, who was also in the Army, in California. No divorce records were found, but Bilberry remarried fourteen years later. His 1989 obituary said he served in Vietnam. The woman he remarried and two of his siblings have died.

After the military, few know what happened to Reba. Different family stories have her popping up at a family visit in Arizona with her husband and often seeing an aunt in Chicago. Some relatives told police she took up alcohol and drugs and began dressing like a man.

Amanda Ingram, who would have been Reba’s great-niece, took up her grandfather’s search for his sister. As a family historian, she keeps a meticulous family tree, with Census records and photos, on a family website. Ingram has recently seen pictures of her late aunt and recognizes some Bailey family features, like a longer face shape. In one photo, Reba is wearing a black button-down, her salt and pepper hair cropped short above her deep-set eyes. Prominent teeth peek out of a subtle smile. Ingram hopes to find more answers.

“It is kind of like an onion,” she said. “You keep peeling it back and hopefully you find the story you really wanted to know.”

THE COOK WITH NO PAST

On a snowy day in the late 1970s, a person wearing a military-style jacket and aviator cap fastened under the chin was curled up on the porch of St. Francis Catholic Worker House. The house on Chicago’s North Side was a place for homeless people and others who wanted to live in a community.

Resident Denise Plunkett was leaving for work at a hospital when she stumbled upon the person dressed in men’s clothes. The encounter was so unusual that Plunkett, now 83, remembers it vividly. The person spoke of themselves in the third person and didn’t answer personal questions about where they had come from. When asked their name, they would either say “Mr. Seven” or “He’s a number, not a name. His name is Seven.” Nobody knew why.

Plunkett overlapped for a few years with Seven at the house and suspected there were possible mental health problems, but Seven declined help. Seven quickly found a prominent role at the house. He became the cook, whipping up beans and rice dishes and pasta casseroles each day. Word spread quickly in the neighborhood — home to several homeless advocacy organizations — that the meals at St. Francis were hearty. Crowds would line up outside the door for a taste of Seven’s cooking.

Though Seven’s past remains a mystery, the discovery of their identity has brought closure to their loved ones. The Cook County sheriff’s office is working to honor Reba C. Bailey with a new gravestone and military honors, ensuring that she receives the recognition she deserves..