In early 1968, two boys found a dead body in New York’s East Village. There was no identification on the man, and no one in the neighborhood knew him. He was fingerprinted and buried in a mass grave, identified by the NYPD nearly two years later.
In the 1960s, fingerprint identification of deceased persons—a laborious process in those days—often happened because the deceased had a criminal record.
His first arrest was in 1956, but he was not convicted of any crime until 1961.
“On May 1, 1961, he was arrested for attempting to cash a check that had been stolen from a liquor store the previous January, and at the same time was also charged with driving under the influence of drugs. He pled guilty to both charges and was sentenced to six months of treatment for drug addiction at the California Institute for Men at Chino.”
Driscoll reportedly cleaned up (his drug of choice was heroin), went east to New York City, and even achieved some fame.
“[H]e purportedly settled into Andy Warhol’s Greenwich Village art community known as “The Factory.” During this time, he also participated in an underground film entitled Dirt, directed by avant-garde filmmaker Piero Heliczer.”
But this was not Driscoll’s first film. He had been in a few films earlier in life.
Here he is (in the upper right corner) playing Johnny in the Disney movie Song of the South.
And he provided the voice for the lead character in the later Disney movie Peter Pan.
Yes, Bobby Driscoll was a child star for Disney and other studios before appearing in Dirt.
But right after Driscoll’s voice became famous in Peter Pan, Disney declined to renew his contract. The reason? Acne…and the fact that he wasn’t a cute kid any more.
This led to his tailspin, which eventually led to his fingerprinting.
And his positive identification after his death.
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