More than two decades after a California banker vanished, parts of his body have washed up on the west coast – for a second time.
Partial remains discovered on a Sonoma County beach in June 2022 have now been identified as Walter Karl Kinney, a 59-year-old banker who disappeared in 1999, according to the DNA Doe Project.
A family was walking along Salmon Creek Beach looking for seashells when they spotted a long leg bone protruding from the sand, with surgical hardware still attached. Deputies who were called to the area searched for additional remains, but came up empty handed.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office turned to the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses genetic genealogy to identify unknown remains. After developing a DNA profile and uploading it to a public database, the remains were identified as Kinney.
In a bizarre twist, other parts of Kinney’s body had already been found along the same coastline years earlier.
Kinney, who was born in 1940, had been living in Santa Rosa when he disappeared in August 1999, according to the DNA Doe Project. At the time, investigators had little to go on – until a grim discovery later that same year.
A severed leg washed ashore at Bodega Head, about five miles south of Salmon Creek Beach. The foot was still inside a size 12 Rockport ProWalker shoe fitted with a custom orthopedic insert. But with no other remains, the investigation hit a dead end, SFGATE reported.
The first break in the case came in 2003 when a woman in Cleveland contacted authorities to report that her father, Walter Kinney, had not been seen for several years. While she said it wasn’t unusual for him to lose contact due to struggles with alcoholism and periods of incarceration, the length of his absence raised concern.
Investigators obtained Kinney’s medical records, which showed a history of foot problems. X-rays matched the remains found at Bodega Head, confirming those remains were his.
In January 2026, nearly two decades later, researchers with the DNA Doe Project uncovered past reporting on the 1999 remains and the 2003 identification, allowing investigators to link both discoveries to the same person – making Kinney a rare case of someone identified as a John Doe twice, the organization said.
“This case was unusual – it’s not often we see someone end up as a John Doe twice,” said Traci Onders, team leader with DNA Doe Project. “But thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, we were able to resolve this mystery and provide some answers to everyone involved in this case.”
But despite identifying the remains, there are still unanswered questions in the case. Authorities have not determined how Kinney died or whether foul play was involved.
In 2003, his daughter described him to investigators as a man who was “smart, sensitive, almost to a fault,” and said, “This world was just too harsh a place for him.”
