Human remains that were found — twice— on Bay Area beaches have been identified as those of a California banker who disappeared in 1999.
The man was identified as 59-year-old Walter Karl Kinney, a former banker who lived in Santa Rosa, according to a news release by the nonprofit DNA Doe Project. Kinney disappeared in 1999 and on June 17, 2022, a family looking for sea shells on Salmon Creek State Beach came across a bone sticking out of the sand. It was later determined to be a human tibia.
A search of the area did not yield more human remains and it was unknown to whom it belonged.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office brought the case to the DNA Doe Project, which developed a DNA profile and uploaded it to the GEDmatch database in January, according to the release. A team of volunteers began working on the case.
The DNA from the bone pointed the team to Kinney’s family, who had moved from the East Coast to San Diego. Kinney was born in 1940 in San Diego and later moved to Santa Rosa, according to the release.
The team found a news article about other human remains washing ashore in 1999 a few miles south of Bodega Bay, about four miles from Salmon Creek State Beach, according to the release. Another clue fell into place when a woman got in touch with investigators in 2003 about her father, who was last seen Aug. 10, 1999.
Using X-ray records, investigators were able to confirm that the partial remains found in 1999 and in 2022 belonged to Kinney, according to the release. A cause of death was not confirmed.
The DNA Doe Project presented the lead to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and investigators confirmed that “Salmon Creek John Doe” was Kinney.
“This case was unusual — it’s not often we see someone end up as a John Doe twice,” project team leader Traci Onders said in the release. “But thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, we were able to resolve this mystery and provide some answers to everyone involved in this case.”
