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The needles in the haystack have already been found in four unidentified body cases in Stafford and Caroline counties.

The trick is piecing together the puzzle of who the men, woman and boy were and how they ended up dead, anonymously, in four separate locations.

The three unidentified bodies found in Stafford and two in Caroline are among 165 such cases throughout the state since the 1960s, according to Paul Yoakam, an investigator with Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

In an effort to drum up interest, the four area cases were among numerous unidentified body investigations profiled in January—with new facial digital likenesses created by the FBI—by the medical examiner.

Unfortunately, no tips have come in for the local cases since the update.

But special investigators with the Virginia State Police and a detective with the Stafford Sheriff’s Office are still working the cases in an effort to find out the names of the dead and how they met their fate.

“They need to be returned back to their families,” Stafford Detective Dave Wood said in a recent interview.