This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
John Edwin Duff, 27, went missing from Multnomah County, Ore., in September 1994. A month later, Ogden firefighters responded to a blaze at 119 W. 29th St. They later found the body of a man who had apparently taken refuge in the home before it accidentally caught fire.
After exhausting leads on the man's identity, and an analysis of his fingerprints yielded no results, investigators added the case to the National Missing & Unidentified Persons System in December 2010. The sheriff's office in Duff's home county did the same with Duff's disappearance in Feb. 2012.
Utah investigators realized last month that the two entries involved the same man. Ogden Police Sgt. Tim Scott re-opened the case after NAMUS alerted them that there may be a match to a missing person from Salt Lake City.
That lead proved untrue, but Scott went to the Utah State Crime Lab to run the man's fingerprints again. This time, they landed a match: It was Duff.
Ogden investigators worked with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office to locate and notify Duff's family.
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