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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/another_meme_account on 2024-01-03 11:46:53+00:00.
I was writing a research paper on the accuracy of facial reconstructions in unidentified persons cases, when I stumbled upon a case that is very local to me. This will be my first case writeup ever, so bear with me. Constructive critique very welcome.
Poland's Olsztyn John Doe was a man estimated to be around 15-17 years old, found in Olsztyn's Lake Krzywe (also known as Lake Ukiel) on 10th July 1999. His cause of death is stated to be drowning, no more than 3 days prior. He was found to have dark blonde hair, and stood at around 175 cms (5'9).
This one hit particularly close to home, as I had spent nearly every summer since I was a child playing and swimming in that very lake.
To provide context, the Warmian-Masurian Voievodeship, to which Olsztyn is the capital, is known as a popular vacation spot with lakes counted in the hundreds, and numerous forests. During the holiday season tourists from all over Poland gather both in the smaller villages, and in the larger cities, such as aformentioned Olsztyn, but also Mrągowo, Elbląg, Ostróda, and many others. The tourists included both the wealthy who use the network of lakes and canals for sailing, as well as younger people, high school- and collage-aged, often associated with Harcerstwo (Scouts), who would travel by cheap means like trains, hitchhiking, bicycling, or sometimes straight up walking on foot, sleeping either in cheap youth hotels, or in tents.
Out of sheer curiosity, through the Itaka Foundation's website (Polish equivalent of NamUs) I looked around for missing person cases aggregated from all over Poland looking for information that would line up, and I was surprised to find someone who could be a potential match.
- Translated to English
Maciej Piotr Jóźwiak was a 21 year old man last seen in Elbląg (around 2 hours by car/train away from Olsztyn). He was 178 cms tall (5'10), just an inch taller than Olsztyn Doe, had dark blonde hair as seen on his photo, which also matches up to the Doe in question, and his eyes were reported to be gray. Taking the facial disfiguration that can be caused by spending several days in water into account, the reconstruction bears a similarity to his facial features.
The only caveat is that Jóźwiak was reported missing/last seen (distinction unclear) on 22nd October 1999, over three months after the discovery of Doe's body. I was looking around the newspaper archives from that region on the surrounding dates and there were no mentions of any missing person reports, with the only information source on his case being the Itaka page, and a brief mention in a local newspaper article about missing persons. [EN]
The long time gap can be possibly explained by the possibility that his family, or whoever else reported him missing, possibly assumed he might have taken an extended vacation, and which was very likely at his age went hitchhiking around the country and didn't stay in touch, or maybe they assumed he willingly ran away or something. His missing report date would also mark around 3 weeks from the start of the academic school year, which at his age, assuming he attended a university, was an understandable time frame to realize something might be wrong beyond just an extended vacation. Maybe he got separated from a friend group early on during such a trip and they assumed he went on with his vacation on his own, not caring about staying in touch with them. Not to mention that the police was severely (and still is) underfunded, at the time mostly focused on local criminal activities which were rampant in 90s Poland, so they likely just didn't care about it enough to check for any possible UID matches outside of their own municipality.
A lot of assumptions had to be made in order for this to fit, but they are far from unlikely. Once again, this is my first case write-up ever, so I'm sorry if it's not up to quality standard, I hope I'm not the only person who sees this correlation.