A man who mysteriously vanished and was officially declared dead after a 1977 barn fire in Canada has been found alive, living under a different name in Oklahoma, The Daily Mail reported on Monday.
Ronald Stan was 32 when he went missing after the fire in East Williams, Canada, on Sept. 29, 1977. Nine years later, authorities officially declared him dead.
"I remember that one quite well because we dug through dead pigs and so-on with our boots on, and had done our very best to find human remains," retired firefighter Jim Walsh told CTVNews. "And there was none in that barn."
But a normal audit by the Ontario Provincial Police in July turned up something else. The agency said they tracked Stan down in Oklahoma where the now 69-year-old has been living under the name Jeffrey Walton.
OPP Const. Laurie Houghton said Walton left behind a family in Canada and they have been informed of his location in the U.S. American authorities have also been told of Walton's disappearance, but Houghton did not say if they were independently investigating.
"I can't speak to his motives," she told The New York Daily News.
Houghton also said that modern technology was responsible for finding the missing man.
"There's a lot that's available to us now for investigative tools that wasn't available to us back in 1977. As a result, we were able to connect the dots, essentially, and lead us to the state of Oklahoma," she said, according to The New York Daily News.
Canadian police do not anticipate pressing charges against Stan and the case is now closed.
