The living come and go in the busy police station, but after half a century, Mr. Bones still waits patiently to give his final statement.

There's a tub in an evidence locker in the state trooper's headquarters in Bedford, Pa., that contains -- smothered and muffled in bubble wrap -- the mortal remains of a man of mystery. Mr. Bones, as police named him, was apparently murdered a half century ago in a marshy area off a New England expressway. Today, he still waits to be processed so he can move on.

Almost seven years ago, sympathetic officials, unable to identify the poetic drifter, tried to put him to rest in a donated, potter's grave. After lingering since being discovered in 1958 -- having died about two years before with a bullet to the head -- he was even going to get a headstone.

But the preacher who prepared the final farewell never got to utter a word of goodbye to quiet Mr. Bones. The local district-attorney at the time brought in a court order which decided the corpse is still evidence of a major crime, and must be held onto. At least until someone finally steps forward to claim him as lost kin.

"He's not just put in with (other evidence)," state Trooper Joseph Kovel explains from the Bedford headquarters. "We're more sophisticated than that."

Mr. Bones has been given his own personal space, along with the curious clues held in the belongings he died with. Discovered by a pipeline crew, his effects include a book of classic literature and another on poetry. There was also a shaving kit, a small travelling stove, a gun and ammo.

But not one of the reminders of life, including a cryptic key with "Active 195 Ave. A" stamped in the brass, have so far led investigators closer to solving his death. Or life.

But Trooper Kovel now says the man may well have come across the border from Canada. He's unsure whether Canadian authorities were originally ever contacted about Mr. Bones, but the travelling equipment -- as well as the scholarly hints of his existence -- could point to a Jack Kerouac-style traveller from the north. If he was Canadian, it would also explain why no kin picked up on news reports of his body being found.

"Someone out there is missing this man -- he belongs to someone," says Kovel, who inherited Mr. Bones six years ago from previous minders.

If nothing else is known about Mr. Bones, he likely had been places and seen things. A composite sketch shows a handsome man in his 30s. The FBI crime lab noted his strong jaw and thick brown hair.

The quiet, pencil-lead eyes of the sketch don't capture the plastic contact lenses he was wearing -- still a novelty in that era. And his mouth closed, you can't see Mr. Bones' gold tooth.

Before entering his cramped holding cell, he once stood 6-foot-4 and weighed about 200 pounds.

When they found him, he still had $35 in his wallet.

The remains of his day spent four decades in a cardboard barrel, stored in a county jail. A long list of sheriffs would look after him, then move on.

Whether this story, and any other, helps Mr. Bones get out from under the fluorescent lights which he's been drawn to, will be known in more time.

VAGUE FUTURE

But if no one comes forward, he'll remain waiting.

Officials say they'll free him only after all those who knew him or were involved in the criminal case are presumed dead. That future is as vague as his past.

"I'd just to like to reunite him with his family," says Kovel.

That can't come soon enough for Bedford County Sheriff Gordon Diehl, who organized a pre-Christmas burial for Mr. Bones in 2001 -- after the stranded traveller had been stuck in his thick cardboard barrel for 40 years.

His headstone was to read "unknown".

At the 11th hour, the internment was stopped, and Mr. Bones was brought back in for more questioning.

"Who knows what new investigative tool might come up tomorrow that will make it possible to find out (his past)," says his post-mortem friend, Sheriff Diehl.