By AP/KWMU

East St. Louis, Ill. – Friends say they think an elderly blind man whose body laid unclaimed for more than two weeks in the St. Clair County morgue might have been Clarence Johnson, a once-famous St. Louis blues guitarist.

Paramedics found the man lying in his bed last month in an unheated East St. Louis apartment. He later died at a hospital.

Acquaintances say Johnson, 86, lived alone at the address where the man was found.

But St. Clair County's deputy coroner Curt Schildknecht says unless a next of kin shows claims the body, the man will be buried as a "John Doe" in a donated casket and burial plot.

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