One Boise cold case isn’t on ice anymore.
In the four decades since an unidentified man was found dead in a church in December 1982, his identity has remained a mystery—until today, that is.
Formerly known solely as the “Unknown Wanderer” to true crime lovers, as well as viewers of the 1990 Unsolved Mysteries episode chronicling his story, the man was identified as Dr. Mathew Francis Betkouski in an Ada County Sheriff’s Office press conference on Sept. 23.
The breakthrough came after Detective Tim Cooper reopened the case in 2019 and discovered a key found in the Unknown Wanderer’s belongings had a marking indicating it was from a hardware store in Jacksonville, Fla.
That same key also featured an etching that led Cooper to the Jacksonville street of Mills Court, where he obtained the property deeds from the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Among the names in those documents was Betkouski, who had been declared dead in 1989—seven years after the discovery of the Unknown Wanderer’s body.
