Sheriff’s office turns to Texas DNA lab to ID Moss Landing remains

By Ricardo Tovar

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    MOSS LANDING, California (KSBW) — The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office hopes that a Texas DNA lab can be the key to identifying the remains of a woman found in Moss Lading back in 2023.

The Monterey County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office has asked Othram, a DNA lab in The Woodlands, Texas, to identify a woman whose remains were found by fishermen on the beach of Moss Landing.

Several fishermen were walking to the car after fishing and found a human jawbone with two teeth on April 17, 2023. It was later identified as that of an unknown female.

“We want to hopefully get answers for this person’s family and give them some closure,” said Jeffrey Squires, a detective with the Sheriff-Coroner’s Office. “It’s also the next step in trying to figure out what exactly happened to this woman.”

Traditional DNA was conducted to make a profile and upload it to the national DNA database to hopefully find a match. A match was not found and she was known as Monterey Jane Doe.

Details on her case were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System UP131072.

To continue the investigation, Othram has been contacted to see if advanced DNA testing can identify the woman.

“Once we have a lead, there will be a confirmatory test because we will be able to contact the unidentified woman’s family with law enforcement and ask them if they’re missing someone,” said Kristen Mittelman, Chief Development Officer at Othram. “That means the person can have a death certificate and a proper burial–that’s the important thing.”

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