DNA could be key to solving FBI most-wanted case

Workers labor to exhume the body of a John Doe buried in 1981 in Scottsboro, Ala. The FBI is exhuming the body in its search for a 10 Most Wanted Fugitive accused of killing his family with a sledgehammer nearly 40 years ago. In court filings, the FBI said there is a strong resemblance between photos of the John Doe and former State Department diplomat William Bradford "Brad" Bishop Jr.

The FBI will use DNA from a decades-old cigarette butt in its quest to determine whether a body exhumed from an Alabama grave is one of its top 10 most-wanted fugitives, authorities said Friday.

The cigarette butt was collected as authorities investigated William Bradford "Brad" Bishop Jr., Scottsboro police Lt. Scott Matthews said.

Bishop was accused of using a sledgehammer to kill his wife, mother and three sons in their Bethesda, Maryland, home in 1976.

Authorities later found the bodies burned in North Carolina. Bishop's station wagon was found parked in the vast Great Smoky Mountains National Park south of Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Authorities have found no trace of Bishop since then.

On Thursday, the body of an unknown hitchhiker who had been killed by a vehicle in 1981 was exhumed from a grave in Scottsboro.

It was a tip from an Alabama man, Jeremy Collins of Scottsboro, that led to the gravesite.

"We wouldn't have been there without him," said Paul Daymond, an FBI spokesman in Alabama.

Renewed interest in the decades-old events in Maryland and Alabama began about a year ago, when Matthews took an interest in trying to identify the unknown hitchhiker killed along a highway in his town in 1981.

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DNA could be key to solving FBI most-wanted case