The remains were found in Olympic national park over two decades ago. Photo: Ser Amantio di Nicolao // Wikimedia Commons
The identity of a set of human remains found in Olympic National Park has remained a mystery for 26 years. However, thanks to the efforts of the National Park Service, King County Medical Examiner’s Office and Othram, a forensic genealogy laboratory that provided genetic testing and analysis, the decades-long mystery has finally been solved.
According to a National Parks press release, the remains were identified as belonging to Joseph Louis Serrao Jr. Serrao was a Hawaiian who had been in Washington state before going missing in 1998. In July of 2000, his remains were found inside of a tent in a remote area of the Sol Duc River drainage. Though the King County Medical Examiner’s Office was able to determine at the time that the remains belonged to a 30- to 50-year-old man, his identity remained a mystery due to the fact that readable fingerprints could not be lifted from the tent.
The case remained cold until 2024, when a forensic anthropologist with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office submitted a DNA sample to Othram. The laboratory analyzed a broad range of DNA markers to identify potential relatives and leads, and had identified possible family connections by 2025.
“This case remained unresolved for nearly 30 years, but investigators never lost sight of the goal of identifying this individual and finding answers for his family,” said Debra Flowers, deputy chief of the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch. “I’m proud of the persistence and collaboration that made this identification possible, and I hope it brings some measure of closure to those who have spent so many years wondering what happened to Joseph.”
