'Seminole Doe' identified after 2 decades of searching

Posted: Apr 25, 2022 / 09:17 AM CDT

Updated: Apr 25, 2022 / 10:13 PM CDT

UPDATE: A name is the only thing we take from cradle to grave and for 22 years a grave in the City of Foley cemetery has been without a name, until now.

For all these years he was known as “Seminole Doe”. His real name, is Daniel Muniz, Jr. His family called him Shorty. “All my family members would tell you he would do anything for anybody he was a good guy.” For Amanda Galleher Muniz was the only father she had ever known.

“My whole life I would wonder why did he never come try and find me. Am I not important? Did he not love me as much as I loved him? Why is he not looking for me.” All of those questions have now been answered.

Muniz drowned in the Styx River in March of 2000. His body was pulled from the water wearing only a pair of black jeans, no ID, only distinctive tattoos left as clues. It was those tattoos that Amanda saw one night flash on a computer screen. “Now we have the technology and back then we didn’t have the technology to be able to find things,” she said from her home in Tennessee.

She had been searching for years when Baldwin County Sheriff’s Capt. Clint Cadenhead reopened a cold case in 2019. “It was the first case I pulled out and started looking at again just remembering the tattoos were so very distinctive and I figured this would be a case that we could possibly solve.”

He was there when Muniz’s body was pulled from the river. The case has always stayed with him.

Investigators tried everything, DNA, fingerprints. uploading photos of those tattoos on missing person websites and then last summer, a phone call. A stepdaughter was positive she had found her Dad. Galleher was able to give a driver’s license number, social security number, a birth date. “Ultimately what we were able to do was to get some DNA from the sister and we had Rockport Police in Texas go and get a sample and that helped really get us on the right track.”

Galleher was home in Tennessee when she got the call. “I was doing graduation invitations for my oldest daughter. She is the class of 2022 and it’s been 22 years and I feel like, I’m real big on signs and I feel like maybe that was him saying you know what, I’m going to be there.”

After 22 years the search is over. Seminole Doe has a name. He is unknown, no longer.

BALDWIN COUNTY, Ala. (WKRG) — For more than two decades the identity of a man found floating in the Styx River has been a mystery, until now.

The man known only as “Seminole Doe” has been identified. Baldwin County Sheriff’s Capt. Clint Cadenhead confirms his name is Daniel Muniz, Jr. His identity was confirmed through a DNA sample from his sister in Texas.

Muniz was found in the Styx River back in 2000. He was only wearing black jeans and more than half a dozen tattoos. Pictures of those tattoos were released back in 2019. Muniz’s stepdaughter recognized one of the tattoos, got in touch with investigators which eventually led to that DNA sample.