A bone discovered by a family searching for seashells on a Northern California beach has helped solve one of Sonoma County's most unusual cold cases, linking remains found decades apart to the same missing man. Authorities confirmed that a severed leg found on a Sonoma County beach in 2022 belonged to Walter Karl Kinney, a former banker from Santa Rosa who disappeared in 1999. The identification, announced in March 2026, closed a decades-long mystery in which the same man had been classified as unidentified on two separate occasions nearly 25 years apart.