Police identify human remains found 47 years ago in Arizona desert

By Sarah Engel, CNN

(CNN) — Human remains found in 1976 by hikers in a shallow desert grave near Lake Mohave, just a few miles from the Arizona-Nevada border, have finally been identified.

Luis Alonso Paredes, who was originally from El Salvador, was positively identified thanks to national fingerprint records, “which was not an available resource at the time of the initial investigation,” the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona said in a Facebook post Tuesday.

Authorities at the time created a composite sketch of the victim’s probable likeness and took fingerprints but were unable to match them to anyone. They also determined that the victim was a 30- to 35-year-old man who had been shot in the head at close range, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Investigations Unit began revisiting the case in October 2023.

Paredes may have been living or working in the Las Vegas area at the time of his death, according to the sheriff’s office.

Investigators have been unable to locate any relatives of Paredes, but are encouraging anyone with information on the case or Parades’ family to contact detectives.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.