A family has received closure following a 50-year-old missing person cold case. In July, a DNA profile from the 1971 cold case of a juvenile male was identified as 15-year-old Winston Arthur Maxey III from Boise Idaho. In the spring of 1971, Maxey had hitchhiked to Oregon for a job opportunity. Later that year the Coos County Sheriff’s Office received a report of an unidentified juvenile male in the Englewood area of Sneddon Creek. Investigators at the time tracked down all the leads however, due to limited technology and the condition of the deceased the medical examiner was unable to determine the cause of death or the identity of the individual.
The case remained open and was revisited in 2017. A medical examiner exhumed the remains and obtained a DNA sample. The sample was registered through a database and analyzed by Parabon Nanolabs who were able to provide a profile of the male. The DNA profile was used to search through sources for missing persons, cold cases, and ancestry sites. In July of this year, Parabon Nanolabs was able to provide a report and able to identify the family. Coos County Detectives began contacting family members requesting a secondary DNA profile and were able to positively confirm his identity. The Coos County Sheriff’s Office is working with the family to produce a death certificate and return the remains to the family in Idaho.