Military honors bestowed on Illinois veteran identified nearly a decade
after death
[July 03, 2025]
By SOPHIA TAREEN
CHICAGO (AP) — Standing near the gravestone for the relative he never
met, Mark Bailey accepted the crisply folded American flag from the Army
officer, hugged it to his chest and closed his eyes.
Though the person he called his aunt — born Reba Caroline Bailey — had
been estranged, missing for decades and died in 2015 as an unidentified
ward of the state, he felt connection and a sense of closure.
“I want to let Reba know we’re part of the circle and part of the
family,” he said.
Mark Bailey was among dozens of attendees at an unusual funeral service
with military honors this week for an Illinois veteran with memory
problems so severe that they died an unnamed person. The ceremony became
possible because of an extraordinary cold case investigation that
identified the 75-year-old postmortem.
Investigators unearthed the mystery of how the Women’s Army Corps
veteran ended up homeless in Chicago with few recollections of their own
life, aside from identifying as a man named Seven.
“I never knew I had this family member,” said Mark Bailey’s 19-year-old
son Cole, who also drove from central Illinois for the service. “It’s
nice to know I have somebody that’s been found and isn’t lost anymore.”
Since the investigation’s conclusion, the numbered cement cylinder that
marked the unidentified grave has been replaced with a rectangular
plague with a cross that reads: “Reba Caroline Bailey, PFC US Army.”
The cold case
The case of Seven Doe, the name appearing in some official records, came
to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office in 2023. The unidentified body
belonged to a person who died of natural causes in an assisted living
facility. They were a ward of the state, unable to remember a legal name
or family.
The cause of death was heart disease with diabetes and dementia as
contributing factors and the body was buried in a section for unclaimed
people at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on Chicago's Far South Side.
The medical examiner marked it as the 4,985th case of the year and put
the number on the headstone.
In 2023, investigators ran fingerprints taken postmortem and found a
1961 Army record for the veteran, formerly of Danville, about 140 miles
(225.31 kilometers) south of Chicago. The search for close living
relatives came up short; five siblings and an ex-husband had all died.
The family members they did locate had only heard stories of a relative
who had disappeared. After making the identification, detectives ordered
a new headstone with the same name on military records. It was quietly
installed last year.
Commander Jason Moran, who oversees the sheriff’s missing persons unit,
said it was rewarding to make sure the identified veteran got the
benefit of a funeral with military honors.
“It’s just a privilege to be able to help families and really close the
story,” said Moran, whose work on other high-profile cold cases has
gained notoriety.
Seven's mysterious life
Several generations of the Bailey family have told stories about what
happened to their missing relative since leaving the military to get
married.
They've wondered about the possibility of children or their relative's
gender identity. Some believe that there was a family dispute but the
stories about its origins vary from the decision to join the military to
sexual orientation.
Family members tried to find their missing relative over the years,
including Amanda Ingram, who would have been a great-niece. She
maintains a meticulous family tree with Census records and photos.
“It’s amazing how somebody can just disappear like that and not know
what happened,” Ingram said this week. “I’m pretty sure we’re never
going to know the details.”
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Staff Sgt. Kobe Green and Master Sgt. Derrick Bailey, right, present
Mark Bailey with an American flag during during a military funeral
for his aunt, 75-year-old Pfc. Reba C. Bailey, a former missing
person cold case named Seven Doe, Tuesday, July 1, 2025 at Mount
Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. (AP Photo/Talia Sprague)
On a winter day in the late 1970s, a person wearing a military-style
jacket and aviator cap was curled up on the porch of St. Francis
Catholic Worker House in Chicago. Residents who stayed there at the
time told the Associated Press that the person asked to be called
Seven, spoke in the third person and identified as a man.
Seven quickly became the house cook. The meals drew crowds to the
neighborhood where several homeless advocacy groups operated,
according to former residents' accounts.
Investigators have tried to explain the memory loss and floated
theories about brain damage related to a 1950 car accident that
killed Bailey's mother or to military service. That included stints
at Fort Ord in California, a polluted former Army base, and Fort
McClellan in Alabama, formerly used for chemical weapons training,
and where the federal government has acknowledged potential exposure
to toxins.
Neither family, investigators nor residents of the worker house
figured out the meaning behind the name Seven.
Ingram, who lives in Alabama, couldn’t make the ceremony this week.
But she asked volunteers from an Illinois chapter of Daughters of
the American Revolution to attend on her behalf.
“Everybody who comes to visit that cemetery will pass by it and know
who she was,” said Ingram, whose detailed family trees include
records using Bailey's birth name.
Honoring a complicated life
Mark Bailey said he and his son wanted to bring something to the
service that would honor both parts of their long-lost relative's
life.
They had heard their relative had an affinity for the Cubs and
looked for a jersey with the number “7” on it, but settled on a blue
team cap. They set it on the headstone.
The service held Tuesday included prayers, a 21-gun salute and a
bugler playing taps — a chilling, 24-note salute that is
traditionally played at funerals of U.S. military veterans.
Attendees included Cook County sheriff's investigators and
Archdiocese of Chicago staff.
“I just wish the rest of them could be identified as well,” Mark
Bailey told those attending while pointing to the rows of
unidentified graves.
Dart, the Cook County sheriff, said the ceremony left him nearly
speechless, saying the Illinois veteran deserved military honors and
a flag from the U.S. president “instead of being forgotten and left
as an anonymous number somewhere.”
Relatives said they planned to eventually display the flag at the
American Legion in Potomac, near where the Bailey family has roots.
Mark Bailey said the acknowledgement of military service was
particularly meaningful with so many veterans in the extended
family. He hoped the memory would stay with his son Cole, who plans
to enlist.
“For him, it’ll be something he’ll have forever,” he said.
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