Fifty-two years after a young hitchhiker was killed in a fiery crash on a California desert highway, authorities have identified the man known as the Baker John Doe as Terrance Lee Ronco, a 20-year-old military veteran from Indiana, SFGATE reported.

In the early hours of Nov. 8, 1974, a rented van carrying antique furniture slammed into a parked tractor-trailer on Interstate 15, about 20 miles east of Baker, California, and burst into flames. A wire report published that day identified the van's driver as Mark A. Mullins, 19, the site reported. Ronco had reportedly told fellow travelers his name, where he had been and where he was going, yet investigators and, later, internet sleuths could not establish who he was until now.