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Human remains discovered in the summer of 2022 on a beach in California recently were identified as those of a former banker who disappeared in 1999.

The DNA Doe Project (DDP) on Thursday announced that bones found on Salmon Creek state beach in northern California in June 2022 – by a family searching for seashells – belonged to 59-year-old Walter Karl Kinney, a former banker who lived in nearby Santa Rosa.

According to the DDP, the family came across a bone in the sand that contained surgical hardware. A pathology exam suggested it was a tibia – however, a search of the surrounding area uncovered no additional remains, leaving investigators initially unable to determine its identity.

After the Sonoma county sheriff’s office brought the case to the DDP, the group’s investigative genealogists began working pro bono to identify the remains. They developed a DNA profile and uploaded it to GEDmatch, a public genealogy database, in January 2026.

The team identified a family that had relocated from the east coast to California and settled in the San Diego area. Tracing the family line eventually led investigators to Kinney, who was born in 1940. Although he was born in San Diego, he later moved to Santa Rosa – relatively close to Salmon Creek state beach, the DDP said.

It added: “The critical breakthrough came when team members found an article about human remains that had washed ashore in 1999, just a couple miles south in Bodega Bay.

“In 2003, a woman got in touch with investigators regarding her father, who had last been seen on 10 August 1999. Shortly afterwards, investigators confirmed that the partial remains found in 1999 belonged to her father, Walter Karl Kinney, using X-ray records to confirm the ID.”

A statement attributed to Kinney’s daughter said her father was “smart, sensitive, almost to a fault” and that “this world was just too harsh a place for him”.

After identifying Kinney in just over a week, the DDP presented its findings to the sheriff’s office, which later confirmed the identification.

“This case was unusual,” Traci Onders, a DDP team leader, said in a statement. “It’s not often we see someone end up as a John Doe twice.”

Onders added: “But thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, we were able to resolve this mystery and provide some answers to everyone involved in this case.”

Meanwhile, the Sonoma county sheriff’s office said: “Thank you to the DNA Doe Project for helping us put a name to the human remains found at Salmon Creek Beach. We value this partnership as we continue working together to identify remains found in Sonoma county.”