Body identified more than a year after found in Lake Michigan

Years after police suspended a search for her son, Jeanette Scaffidi finally knows what happened after his boat capsized near the Holland pier.


Police on Wednesday identified a body that washed up on a Grand Haven Township beach in July 2008 as Hartland, Wis., resident Michael Scaffidi.


“We thought it was all over, and now it’s not all over. It’s rehashing everything all over again in our minds,” Jeanette Scaffidi said during a telephone interview Wednesday from her home in Wisconsin.


Scaffidi was reported missing July 9, 2005, after a boating crash on Lake Michigan about two miles southwest of Holland State Park.


Four passengers, including Scaffidi, were ejected from the 42-foot Outerlimits GTX power boat. Another boater, 20-year-old John Desousa Jr. of Bristol, R.I., was killed. Two other passengers were rescued.

Body disappeared


Police said at the time that Scaffidi’s body was thrown from the boat. It could not be located despite extensive searches by police, and later, by the victim’s family that hired a private search firm in attempts to find the body.


The boaters were participating in a charity event called Smoke on the Water Poker Run, in which about 100 boats made stops along the lake to collect cards for a poker hand. The event was based in Grand Haven and followed a 141-mile course with stops in South Haven, Holland, Muskegon and White Lake.


More than three years later, on July 15, 2008, a beach walker discovered human remains washed up along a Lake Michigan beach in Grand Haven Township, about 15 miles north of the accident scene. Police sent samples of the remains to a forensic laboratory at the University of North Texas at Ft. Worth, where the body was identified as Michael Scaffidi.


Police said the identification process required extensive DNA analysis, which included taking DNA samples from Michael Scaffidi’s identical twin brother, Mark.
The process of culturing and growing samples based on decomposing remains and DNA taken from a sibling can take several months.


After discovering the remains in July 2008, the sheriff’s office forwarded the findings to the Texas lab within a month, Lt. Mark Bennett said. Then, they waited for the lab to confirm a match.


“I don’t think it’s terribly unusual, time-frame wise,” Bennett said. “And these remains were in the lake for almost exactly three years.”


Jeanette Scaffidi said she learned late last week that the remains were her son’s.


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