Human remains discovered near the Hoover Dam over a decade ago have been identified as a Michigan man last seen by his family in 1995.
Investigators with the Mohave county sheriff’s office in Arizona announced on Tuesday that they had identified the remains through forensic genetic genealogy as William Herman Hietamaki, born in 1950, from Trout Creek in Ontonagon county, Michigan.
The cause of death is unknown due to the condition of the remains, but the medical examiner’s office estimates Hietamaki may have died between 2006 and 2008.
The remains were found in 2009 when two workers pouring cement on US Highway 93 near the Hoover Dam found what appeared to be a bone, the Mohave county sheriff’s office said.
The two men then canvassed the area, located additional bones, and concluded that they were human.
After notifying the authorities and national park agents, the workers and agents found additional bones in the area, along with a sun-bleached pair of blue jeans, a damaged white towel, a sun-bleached red T-shirt, a black athletic shoe and a green sleeping bag, authorities said.
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Since 2009, detectives have continued to investigate and made numerous attempts at examining and identifying bone samples over the years to generate leads, but they have garnered “no results”, authorities added.
In 2022, a Mohave county sheriff’s detective obtained a bone sample from the victim and sent it to the Arizona department of public safety’s lab in hopes of identifying the man.
A sample was also sent to the University of North Texas, where an extracted DNA sample was obtained and stored for analysis and identification purposes. But, authorities said: “All attempts to identify John Doe were met with negative results.”
Then, in April of this year, investigators learned that a genetic lab in Texas – Othram Inc – had received grant funding to pay for forensic genealogy testing in this case, and the sample was sent to the lab.
A DNA profile was created and uploaded to a genealogy database for investigation by their assigned genetic genealogist.
This month, investigators received a report indicating that the remains belonged to someone who was a descendant of ancestors born in the mid-1800s and lived in Michigan.
Detectives began interviewing potential relatives of the man and discovered that they hadn’t seen their brother, William Herman Hietamaki, since 1995 when he went traveling in the south-west US to visit a sister in New Mexico.
Reference testing conducted on these relatives confirmed that the unidentified remains were Hietamaki.
Officials said that Hietamaki, who his family said went by his middle name Herman, was born on 4 April 1950 and lived with his family in the Trout Creek area of Michigan.
He attended high school in Michigan and then went to a mechanic’s school upon graduation, officials said, and sometime after high school he left the state and began traveling.
Hietamaki was known to hitchhike to various locations and lived a nomadic lifestyle. Authorities reported that public records indicated he once resided in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he was known to suffer from epileptic seizures.
“The Mohave county sheriff’s would like to thank Othram Inc for their work in this case and for obtaining grant funding to enable the forensic genetic genealogy investigation to be completed,” the department said in a statement.
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“Hietamaki’s family now has closure due to their dedication in identifying John and Jane Does.”
