Man found dead in the 1980s in Arizona has been identified as California gold seeker

Authorities in Arizona have identified the remains of a California man found dead four decades ago in a vast desert area along Route 66.

Advanced DNA testing allowed the Mohave County Sheriff's Office to conclude that the remains were those of Virgil R. Renner, who was found in September 1982 in a rural area outside of Kingman in northwest Arizona.

When sheriff's deputies were called to the scene that day, they recovered the remains alongside a scattering of belongings, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday in a news release on Facebook. Those belongings included a plastic hair comb, a rusty can opener, rusty fingernail clippers, a toothbrush, a tattered short-sleeve shirt, leather belt fragments, remnants of denim pants, and a single argyle sock.

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Man's body remained unidentified in Tucson for decades

The body was later taken to the medical examiner’s office in Tucson where an autopsy determined that the man, who they were not able to identify at the time, had died between 1979 and 1981 around the age of 55. The cause of death could not be determined, the sheriff's office said.

Several attempts to identify Renner were unsuccessful — his identity unknown and his remains unclaimed for decades in the Tucson medical examiner's office, according to the news release. In 2020, a special investigations unit brought the remains back to the Mohave County, where a DNA sample was collected in 2023 and sent to a genetic laboratory in Texas.

That laboratory, Othram Inc., was able to identify Renner using advanced DNA testing, forensic-grade genome sequencing and forensic genetic genealogy, the sheriff's office said.

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Renner's life and death still shrouded in mystery

Not much is known about Renner or his life. The man left his California home in the 1970s in Humboldt County to search for gold in Nevada, but it's unclear how or why he made his way to Arizona.

Renner never married and never had any children, but the sheriff's office said he did have a brother and sister, who are long since dead. However, distant relatives helped scientists develop a DNA profile that led to Renner's identity being learned.