Police in Kirkland, WA identify cold case victim from 1985 with genetic testing
KIRKLAND, Wash. - An investigation four decades in the making has a new break in the case. Police in Kirkland have identified a man who died in 1985.
After 40 years of pursuing tips and leads for the unidentified man found dead outside in the cold, police turned to genecology testing in 2025. By Dec. 22 of last year, a match confirmed him to be the brother of a living relative.
The backstory:
On Dec. 8, 1985 a man was found dead out in the severe winter weather. The King County Medical Examiner ruled his death to be likely accidental due to being improperly clothed.
He did not have any identification on him when he died suffering hypothermia on Points Drive NE in Kirkland.
After years of following leads, the county exhumed his body in 2019 to take DNA evidence from his femur bone. By August 2025, they were able to start identifying possible familial matches.
One man, Gregory, was found to be the brother of the man who died years ago at the age of 35, William Horn.
Dig deeper:
The genetic profile was originally uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System following the 2019 sample collection.
It was also processed by the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab before being sent to the University of North Texas for a more formal comparison.
The results were confirmed on Dec. 22, 2025.
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