I am happy to announce that the DNA Doe Project has been able to identify John Charles City Doe 1979 as Nick Lopsis. Below is some additional information about our work on this identification:
Nearly five decades after his body was found on the banks of the James River, John Charles City Doe has been identified as 27-year-old Nick S. Lopsis. Though he was a native of Prince William County, Lopsis was living in Richmond at the time of his disappearance. He was last seen leaving his residence to go to a workshop, after which he was never heard from again.
On August 28, 1979, partial skeletal remains were found along the bank of the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. Authorities estimated that this unidentified man was 17-23 years old, between 5’3” and 5’9” tall, and possibly Hispanic. He wore a white shirt with blue stripes, khaki colored pants, and a brown belt 32″ in length.
The Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later brought this case to the DNA Doe Project, whose expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify John and Jane Does. At the outset of the genealogy research on this case, it was clear that the unidentified man was Caucasian and had deep roots in West Virginia, but it also appeared that he had a recent ancestor from Southern Europe.
“We thought that our John Doe’s father might have been an immigrant from Southern Europe,” said team co-leader Julie Bracker. “This population is underrepresented in the DNA databases we have access to, which resulted in a smaller number of DNA matches for us to work with.”
In spite of this challenge, the team made swift progress, identifying a family in West Virginia that the unidentified man had ties to. After just three days of research, they found that a descendant of this family had moved from West Virginia to the Washington, D.C. area, where she met and married a man who was originally from Greece. The team then discovered that this couple had a son called Nick, born in 1952 – but he seemed to have vanished from the records.
The team presented this lead to the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, at which point investigators reached out to Nick’s sister. She informed them that she hadn’t heard from her brother since 1979, when he vanished from the Richmond group home where he’d been living. Rapid DNA testing later confirmed that Nick Lopsis was indeed John Charles City Doe.
“It’s an honor to have been entrusted with this vital work by the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and NCMEC,” said team leader Traci Onders. “We hope that the recent resolution of cases like this will encourage more agencies to use investigative genetic genealogy and find answers in cold cases that would otherwise have remained unsolved.”
The DNA Doe Project is grateful to the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, who entrusted the case to us; the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, for funding the lab work, bioinformatics, and database upload costs; Bode Technology for the lab work and bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA for providing their databases; our generous donors who joined our mission and contributed to this case; and the DNA Doe Project’s dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring all our John and Jane Does home.
You're doing the work of angels! Rest peacefully Nick.
That’s great news! Happy his remaining family has some closure. Curious if they were able to determine a cause of death? Not sure if the remains were sufficient enough that the ME could make an assessment.
This is wonderful news!
Do they know how Nick died? Was it an accident? Did he suffer a medical emergency?
Partial skeletal remains, doubtful we'll ever know.
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of.
A video I watched said LE states foul play wasn't suspected. Not sure what they based that on, I'd like to know.
Grateful for donors to the DNA Doe efforts. I would support my tax dollars going to funding DNA Doe and crime backlogs.
I would too.
This still leaves a lot of questions. Why was he living in a group home? Did he have disabilities, past incarceration, addiction issues? What was the workshop regarding? Was he employed at the time or his death? Had he been employed prior to that?
We don’t NEED the answers to these questions, so I’m at peace if I never get any. I also know we’ll probably never find out how he died, or how his remains ended up in a river. But what we know about the man’s life seems almost as mysterious as the circumstances of his death.
He was intellectually disabled, according to this story:
https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/nick-lopsis-cold-case-solved-dec-17-2025
Thank you for that. At least that’s one more piece of the puzzle. Of course, as I said before, those aren’t pieces the public needs to be able to see - but I’m grateful for anything that makes this make more sense.
The story also confirms that foul play isn't suspected, which is I'm sure something of a relief to the family.
I would assume they have some evidence or reason to rule it out. I hope that the family at least has some answers. It's strange no other info has been released though but maybe because they suspect he took his own life.
Thanks you so much for the service.
Excellent work, as always! I'm curious to know if a missing persons report was ever filed, either by the group home or a family member.
https://vasheriff.org/2025/12/10/charles-city-county-investigator-uses-genetic-genealogy-to-solve-1979-cold-case/
On November 24, 2025, the Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed a positive DNA match identifying the remains as those of Nick Lopsis, who had been reported missing on May 31, 1979
I shouldn’t have skimmed the article. Thank you!
Good work! So glad he got his name back.
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How much money and time have you volunteered in order to help identify Does?
There are severely limited resources.