Body of California man who left state to ‘search for gold’ identified

Sometime in the 1970s, a California man headed to Nevada to find gold and was never heard from again. The mystery of Virgil R. Renner’s disappearance now has some answers after the John Doe was identified in Arizona last week. 

In September 1982, some passersby found human remains on Hackberry Road, near historic Route 66, in the desert outside Kingman, Arizona. Mojave County sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene, where they found a comb, a rusty can opener, fingernail clippers and various items of clothing alongside the remains of an approximately 6-foot-1, white adult male around the age of 55 or older. They estimated he had died between 1979 and 1981, but no identity or cause of death could be established.

For decades, the remains were stored at the medical examiner’s office in Tucson, and several attempts to identify the body were unsuccessful. Earlier this year, the county sent the remains to a lab in Texas, where advanced DNA analysis, genome sequencing and genealogical investigations finally revealed the man’s name — Virgil R. Renner.

“Not much is known at this time about Renner. He is believed to have been born in 1910,” the Mojave County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement last week. “He had a brother and a sister, who are long since deceased. He never married and never had children.”

Through interviews with more distant relatives, investigators learned that Renner was from Humboldt County, California, and had headed to Nevada in the early 1970s to “search for gold.” It is unclear how and why Renner’s life ended in the Arizona desert on Hackberry Road. 

Census records reveal Virgil R. Renner was born in Mad River, California, in 1910. In 1941, Renner was sentenced to 30 days in a county jail for evading the draft, despite being eligible for deferment due to being a “member of a religious sect opposed to the draft act,” according to a wire news story at the time. The 1950 census listed Renner as an “inmate” at Mendocino State Hospital, a psychiatric facility where some patients lived. 

The sheriff’s statement thanked Othram Inc., the DNA lab in Texas, for its assistance. “If not for their help, Renner would have remained another John Doe found in the vast desert of Mohave County,” the department said.