Almost 40 years after a man’s body was found in an abandoned building in St. Paul, he has been identified, the DNA Doe Project announced Wednesday.

He was Frank Nicholas Augenti, 33, whose last known address was New York City.

The frozen remains of a man were discovered on Feb. 7, 1985, on the second floor of an abandoned building in Lowertown at Wall Street on Kellogg Boulevard — the old James J. Hill Office Building, now called the Great Northern. The man was believed to have been homeless, and he died of exposure in the weeks to months before his body was found, according to the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit.

The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office brought the case to the DNA Doe Project, for which investigative genetic genealogists volunteer to identity John and Jane Does. The project’s team started working on the case in May and said they homed in on the man’s identity after two days of research.

“It was immediately clear from the DNA results that the unidentified man had Italian heritage,” said Sara Hoffman, team co-leader, in a statement. “When we came across Frank Augenti, we saw that all four of his grandparents had immigrated to America from Italy.”

Augenti was born in 1951 in Nanticoke, Pa. He “had dropped off the radar in the 1980s,” and the team found more evidence to suggest he could be the John Doe in St. Paul. They gave his name to the medical examiner’s office and his identification was confirmed in August.

“We were very fortunate that a cousin had chosen to upload their DNA results to GEDmatch,” said Lisa Ivany, team co-leader. “Without their DNA, this case would still be unsolved. Italian Americans are underrepresented on the DNA databases we have access to, but the more that people upload their DNA results to GEDmatch, FTDNA or DNA Justice, the more cases we’ll be able to solve.”

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