Forty years later, mystery of ‘Spiky Man’ found frozen in cave finally solved

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Pennsylvania authorities Confirmed freeze remains The remains of a man found in the caves below the Pinnacle in 1977 Appalachian Trail.

The Berks County Coroner’s Office revealed the identity of the man dubbed “Top of the Line” in a news release as Nicholas Paul Grubb, 27, of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

Two hikers found the man’s body in the town of Albany on January 16, 1977. That January happened to be one of the coldest months in Pennsylvania’s history, with 49 inches of snowfall that winter.

Grubb is described as a white male, between 25 and 35 years old, with blue eyes and red curly hair. He is approximately 5 feet 10 to 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 155 pounds.

An autopsy was performed on the man at Reading Hospital on January 17, 1977, which revealed an overdose of phenobarbital and pentobarbital. His death was declared a suicide. The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of foul play.

No one claimed Grubb’s body, and the case remained unsolved for decades. He was buried in the Potters Cemetery in Berks County, a plot of land designated by the county for unmarked graves.

In August 2019, his body was exhumed from the Potter cemetery and taken to Reading Hospital, where it was examined by a forensic anthropologist, forensic pathologist and forensic dentist.

The samples collected by the forensic dental examination were sent to the University of North Texas Human Identification Center. The department has successfully solved cold cases in the past. The center conducted tests, but those examinations did not yield any results.

Earlier this month, a cold case detective found Grubb’s original fingerprint card and submitted it to the FBI for examination. On August 27, an agent found a matching fingerprint in less than an hour, ultimately confirming Grubb’s identity.

One of Grubb’s relatives identified him and provided the relevant documents to authorities. His family now wants to bury him in a family plot, and the coroner’s office is working to bring him home.