HOUSTON, Texas – The remains of a Houston-area teenager who disappeared more than six years ago after becoming a victim of human trafficking have been identified. <\/p>\n
The Attorney General’s Office said that advanced DNA testing confirmed the remains belong to Kristen Galvan, who was 15 years old when she disappeared from Montgomery County in January 2020.<\/p>\n
The identification was made through the Attorney General’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit, which reopened the case using forensic genetic genealogy.<\/p>\n
In November 2022, the Missouri City Police Department requested assistance from Texas’s Cold Case Unit after unidentified human remains, recovered on Jan. 29, 2020, were not identified through traditional DNA testing.<\/p>\n
An autopsy and anthropological examination determined the remains were a girl between the ages of 13 and 18 and appeared to be the victim of a homicide. However, the condition of the remains prevented investigators from developing a standard DNA profile, prompting the need for more advanced testing.<\/p>\n
The Attorney General’s Office worked with the University of North Texas to use advanced DNA testing, which gave investigators their first clues about the girl’s identity. Because the victim was a child, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) also joined the investigation.<\/p>\n
The Doe Network also assisted by researching unidentified remains databases, helping investigators determine that the victim could be Galvan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas – The remains of a Houston-area teenager who disappeared more than six years ago after becoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-389221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}