California Banker's Bones Found 19 Years Apart

A seashell hunt on a Northern California beach has closed the loop on a 25-year-old missing-person case. A tibia bone discovered in June 2022 by a family searching for seashells at Sonoma County's Salmon Creek Beach has been identified as belonging to former Santa Rosa banker Walter Karl Kinney, who vanished in 1999, according to the nonprofit DNA Doe Project. The bone, which contained surgical hardware, allowed experts to build a DNA profile that was uploaded to the genealogy site GEDmatch in January, per NBC News. Researchers then linked the profile to a family that had relocated from the East Coast to San Diego and, ultimately, to Kinney.

The key breakthrough came when researchers learned a human leg had washed ashore several miles to the south of Salmon Creek Beach in 1999, per NBC and KTLA. It was identified as Kinney's via x-rays after his daughter contacted authorities in 2003. "It's not often we see someone end up as a John Doe twice," said DNA Doe Project team lead Traci Onders. "But thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, we were able to resolve this mystery and provide some answers to everyone involved in this case." The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office thanked the researchers "for helping us put a name to the human remains." Kinney's daughter described her father as "smart" and "sensitive," adding that "this world was just too harsh a place for him."