On October 16th, 2016 the Dunn County Sheriff’s Office was notified of the discovery of suspected human remains in the Township of New Haven, Dunn County. Investigators responded and were directed to the remains which were observed to be a human skull located adjacent to clothing and hunting type boots which when examined also contained skeletal remains.
With assistance of the Dunn County Medical Examiner’s Office the remains were excavated and collected as evidence. The remains were transported to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. The results of the autopsy were unable to determine cause of death and no trauma was observed to the skeletal remains.
The skeletal remains and their location were consistent with the Dunn County missing case of Douglas L. Poach who was reported missing by his family on January 3rd, 2006. Skeletal remains were submitted to the National Missing Persons Program at the University of North Texas for comparison with family member reference samples collected in the Douglas L. Poach case.
The Dunn County Sheriff’s Office has received examination and testing results from the National Missing Persons Program that the genetic data obtained from samples indicated they were 7.9 billion times more likely to have originated from a biological sibling of the biological samples submitted by the Poach family as opposed to the unidentified remains originating from an unrelated individual.
As a result of the information provided by the National Missing Persons Program in combination with the case investigation conducted by the Sheriff’s Office it is confident in concluding that the skeletal remains discovered on October 16th, 2016 are those of Douglas L. Poach.