Investigators identified Lawrence Drotleff and say his son later admitted cutting up the body after finding him dead.

NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio — A suitcase found by children along a rural Tuscarawas County road in 1998 has led investigators, nearly 28 years later, to identify the dead man and accuse his son of stealing his benefits.

The case matters now because the mystery that began with unidentified body parts in two suitcases has moved into federal court. Authorities say advanced DNA testing identified the remains as Lawrence A. Drotleff, who was about 93 when the suitcases were found, and led them to his son, Larry J. Drotleff of Euclid. Ohio officials say the son cannot be charged with abuse of a corpse because too much time has passed, but federal prosecutors are pursuing alleged theft of Social Security and pension money.

The investigation began Feb. 1, 1998, when the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office received a report that children had found a suitcase along Winkler Hill Road in Dover Township. Inside were several unidentified male body parts, authorities said. Days later, investigators found a second suitcase containing more remains along Boltz Orchard Road in Jefferson Township, about 15 miles away. DNA collected at the time showed the remains belonged to one man, but it did not give deputies a name. Fingerprints and other evidence from the suitcases also failed to identify the victim. Sheriff Orvis L. Campbell later said the case remained a priority because of the way the body was handled.

For years, the man in the suitcases had no confirmed identity. Deputies followed leads as they came in, but each one ended without a suspect or a name. The case changed in 2023, when Campbell directed Detective Sgt. Ryan Hamilton and the sheriff’s detective bureau to review the file again. Investigators turned to DNA testing that was not available when the suitcases were first found. The sheriff’s office said testing was paid for with money seized from an older drug case. With help from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and criminal intelligence analysts Lisa Savage and Jenn Dillion, investigators traced a possible family connection to the Euclid area.

That lead brought investigators to Larry J. Drotleff, now in his 80s. Authorities said additional testing confirmed he was the biological son of the man whose remains had been found in Tuscarawas County. The victim was identified as Lawrence A. Drotleff, born in 1904. Investigators also learned that Larry Drotleff had previously been questioned about money that continued to flow after his father’s death. When Social Security investigators had asked about Lawrence Drotleff, authorities said, Larry Drotleff claimed his father had moved away. The sheriff’s office said that claim helped conceal the elder Drotleff’s death for years.

In a January 2024 interview with Ohio investigators, Larry Drotleff said he had been living with his father and had gone to work one day before returning home to find him dead, according to the sheriff’s office. He denied killing him, authorities said. Investigators said he told them he then used a manual hand saw, not a power saw, to cut up his father’s body. He said he placed some remains, including body parts later found in the two suitcases, along rural roads and put other remains in bags that were thrown into a dumpster near his workplace. Authorities have not said they found evidence proving a homicide.

The case now rests on a legal split between what investigators say happened to the body and what prosecutors say happened to the money. Ohio’s time limit for an abuse of a corpse charge has expired, authorities said, so that charge cannot be filed in state court. Federal prosecutors instead charged Larry Drotleff with stealing about $111,485 in Social Security benefits and about $135,040 from his father’s General Electric pension. The combined amount is more than $246,000. The alleged thefts stretched over years because government and pension payments continued while authorities did not know Lawrence Drotleff was dead.

Campbell said the case did not prove to be a murder, but he described the treatment of the corpse as inexcusable. “It remains difficult to comprehend that the greed of theft could cause someone to treat their father’s body in this manner,” Campbell said. Capt. Adam Fisher also said the passage of time did not mean investigators had forgotten the case. “We do care. We don’t forget,” Fisher said. The sheriff’s office credited the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio, Ohio BCI and local detectives for the renewed investigation.

The rural roads where the suitcases were found shaped the case from the start. Winkler Hill Road and Boltz Orchard Road are not places where investigators had witnesses lined up or clear records to search. The first report came because children playing in the woods saw something out of place. The second discovery widened the crime scene and confirmed that the remains had been split between locations. For detectives, that meant the case began with scattered evidence, no missing-person report that matched the body and a victim whose age and background were unknown. That lack of a name kept the case from moving forward for decades.

Investigators say the DNA work finally gave them the first stable point in the case: a family line. Once they had that, they could compare old evidence to living relatives, review benefit records and interview the son. The federal complaint focuses on money, not on the death itself. Prosecutors must prove the alleged theft counts in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Authorities have not announced a state charge tied to the disposal of the remains, and they have said the abuse of corpse deadline has passed. Court records and future hearings will determine how the federal case proceeds.

The case stands as solved in one major way: Lawrence Drotleff has been identified after nearly 28 years. The criminal case against Larry Drotleff remains pending, and the next public milestones are expected to come through federal court filings and hearings.

Author note: Last updated May 19, 2026.