said on Facebook<\/a> last week. \u201cWe value this partnership as we continue working together to identify remains found in Sonoma County.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Walter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/605e09d45425eb6c1f0c7453c5f10da7.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Walter Karl Kinney. (via DNA Doe Project)<\/p>\n
(via DNA Doe Project)<\/p>\n
The DNA Doe Project said that after the bone was found, a DNA profile was developed for the then-unidentified man. In January, the profile was uploaded to the GEDmatch database, a DNA site built for genetic genealogy research.<\/p>\n
A team working on the case began to make headway shortly afterward, the DNA Doe Project said, and it found a family that had moved from the East Coast to the San Diego area. As the team looked into the family, it came across Kinney\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
The DNA Doe Project said there was a \u201ccritical breakthrough\u201d the team found an article about human remains that had washed ashore in 1999, south of Bodega Bay. The team had also learned that in 2003, a woman got in touch with investigators about her father, who had been missing since August 1999.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the woman contacted police in 2003, the remains found in 1999 were identified using X-ray records as those of her father. This information helped the team connect both sets of remains to Kinney.<\/p>\n
DNA Doe team lead Traci Onders said the case is one of the most \u201cunusual\u201d she has worked on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not often we see someone end up as a John Doe twice,\u201d Onders said in a statement. \u201cBut thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, we were able to resolve this mystery and provide some answers to everyone involved in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinney\u2019s daughter remembered her father as \u201csmart, sensitive, almost to a fault,\u201d and said that \u201cthis world was just too harsh a place for him,\u201d the DNA Doe Project said.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Partial remains found on a California beach four years ago have been identified as those of a former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,109260,108990,3628,108987],"class_list":{"0":"post-245065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-dna-doe-project","12":"tag-salmon-creek-beach","13":"tag-sonoma-county","14":"tag-walter-karl-kinney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}