The Alaska State Troopers responded to reports of human remains found near Sterling on Sunday.
Megan Peters said a fire crew reported the bones.
Peters: “Soldotna AST responded to the scene with the assistance of the fire crews helicopter the remains appear to have been there for several years and there were no identifying items located with the remains, the bones were photographed and also collected, the state medical examiners office was notified of the discovery. At this time the identity of the remains are unknown, the Alaska State Troopers are reviewing cases from the missing person’s clearinghouse in an attempt to identify the remains.”
Peters said the clearinghouse is designed to help with cases like this.
Peters: “Missing Person cases stay open until somebody is found, dead or alive. So if somebody is reported missing to us and they’re in the clearinghouse, we can use the clearinghouse potentially to cross reference when we think someone went missing, an area we think they went missing in, and we can see if we have anything that is a potential match for this case and then we can take that information and potentially get DNA or other information in hopes of doing some kind of comparison so we can positively identify the remains and then figure out what happened to that person.”