After 8 years, misplaced urn reunited with family

WASHINGTON -

It was a reunion eight years in the making. Earl Johnson III reclaimed an urn holding the ashes of his father Earl Johnson Jr.

It's amazing, Johnson said as he received the urn. It really is. I'm speechless because this was a chapter that was lost and finally we got him back.

It is the end of a mystery Kate Justice has been trying to solve for a long time. She found the urn in a box that didn't belong to her while unpacking from a move to her mother's home in South Dakota back in 2007.

I contacted the moving company obviously right away and sent pictures of the urn along with it, she said. Never a peep back from them. Not a thing.

Justice's mother held onto the urn after she moved back to Portland, Ore. The family even called the room where they kept it as Earl's room.

I had people say, Why don't you just scatter him at this point or toss it?' said Justice. I couldn't do it. If it were my loved one, what would I want? I don't know. It just didn't feel right to me and my family, and we were willing to hold on to him and keep trying to find where he was supposed to be.

Documents inside the box had a Maryland address. After trying several other things, this year, she thought to email us here at FOX 5.

We attempted to track down Johnson's family. There was no forwarding address left at the Hyattsville, Md., home where they had lived.

But within less than 24 hours, a viewer who saw our story and knew Johnson helped us piece it all together.

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After 8 years, misplaced urn reunited with family