Remains found in Deschutes River last year now deemed a cold case

Published 12:30 pm Friday, October 20, 2023

Authorities have closed the case of skeletal remains found last year in the Deschutes River north of Archie Briggs Road, concluding that there is currently no way to identify them.

The remains were found by a young girl swimming in the Deschutes River in northwest Bend on Aug. 27, 2022, Bend Police said at the time. Police collected bones from the river, and the state medical examiner’s office confirmed that they were human remains.

One day later, the Deschutes County Search and Rescue team found more bones, which led police to believe the remains were from a single person who had been in the river for a year or longer.

Police sent the remains to the state medical’s examiner’s office for possible DNA identification, but were told on Sept. 21 that identification was not possible because the bone sample tested “was too degraded with bacteria to obtain a DNA profile.”

“At this point, our investigation is at a standstill,” Sheila Miller, a spokesperson for Bend Police, said Friday.

The typical method of identification, using teeth to check dental records, was out of the question in this case because only pieces of a skeleton were found, Miller said.

The lack of movement in the case led District Attorney Steve Gunnels to close it. It won’t reopen until more information becomes available, he said.

Cold cases are relatively rare, Gunnels said.

“Typically we know who the deceased person is,” he said. “We know with some degree of certainty the circumstances of the death.”

In Deschutes County, there are 10-12 cold cases that date back to the 1970s, according to Gunnels. That’s compared to the roughly 5,000 criminal cases his office prosecutes every year.

Authorities push to solve cases like this one as far as possible, Gunnels said.

“But sometimes you just can’t,” he said. “There’s nothing to move the investigation forward.”