Remains found 41 years ago in Arizona desert identified as missing gold hunter, cops say

Helena Wegner
·2 min read
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Human remains found in the Arizona desert 41 years ago have just been identified, deputies said.

Virgil R. Renner, of Humboldt County, California, went to Nevada to search for gold in the 1970s, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said in an Oct. 10 Facebook post.

However, his remains ended up in the Arizona desert near Kingman on Sept. 9, 1982, deputies said.

But for decades, no one knew who the remains belonged to.

When they were first discovered, deputies said they found “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 an argyle sock” along with the remains.

An autopsy was conducted on the remains in Tucson, deputies said.

The medical examiner determined they belonged to a white male over 55 years old who likely died between 1979 and 1981. They couldn’t determine a cause of death, though.

In 2020, the remains were transported to the Mohave County Medical Examiner’s Office, authorities said.

No one had any luck identifying the remains until a sample of his DNA was sent to Othram, a lab in The Woodlands, Texas, that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.

DNA testing from distant relatives was used to confirm the remains belonged to Renner.

Deputies said Renner was likely born in 1910. He didn’t marry or have any children, but he did have a brother and sister.

Investigators said they do not know why he ended up in Arizona.

“The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office would like to thank Othram Inc. once again for their assistance in this investigation. If not for their help, Renner would have remained another John Doe found in the vast desert of Mohave County,” the department said in the post.

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