Duck hunter found woman’s remains 26 years ago in California. She’s now been identified

Nearly three decades ago, a duck hunter stumbled upon the remains of a woman in a California river, according to a sheriff’s office.

The remains, found in the Ryan Slough north of Eureka, could not be identified, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said in a June 7 news release.

However, a little more than a year later, Wayne Adam Ford stepped in the sheriff’s station, admitting to killing “several women,” including the woman who could not be identified, deputies said.

Ford was convicted in 2006 on “four counts of first-degree murder” and sentenced to death, the sheriff’s office said.

Even still, the woman’s identity remained a mystery, deputies said.

But with advances in DNA technology, the woman now has a name: Kerry Ann Cummings.

“While we can’t take away the pain of loss, we hope that this identification can help bring closure to Kerry’s family and the community,” Sheriff William Honsal said in the release.

Search for ID

Over the years, the sheriff’s office said it tried to “identify Ford’s unknown” victim, scouring missing person reports from the West Coast for any leads.

DNA obtained from the remains was put into the state’s missing persons database, along with the National Unidentified Persons DNA index, deputies said.

“No profile matches were ever made,” the sheriff’s office said.

In 2021, the sheriff’s office reached out to Othram Inc., a forensic genealogy company, to see if the woman’s remains could be identified.

Genetic genealogy uses DNA testing coupled with “traditional genealogical methods” to create “family history profiles,” according to the Library of Congress. With genealogical DNA testing, researchers can determine if and how people are biologically related.

Once Othram created a “comprehensive DNA profile” for the woman, scientists found a potential relative, who said a family member, named Kerry, “had been missing since the mid-1990s,” the sheriff’s office said.

Family’s search for answers

Cummings’ sister, Kathie Cummings, told investigators her sister, who would have been 25 at the time, last spoke with family in 1997, deputies said.

“Kerry was suffering from untreated mental illness and told family that she was couch-surfing in the Eugene, Oregon area,” the sheriff’s office said.

Though family offered her a place to stay, Cummings refused, deputies said.

After Cummings vanished, her sister said their parents tried to report her missing in Arizona and Oregon, deputies said. Law enforcement, though, never filed a missing persons report for Cummings.

“Unfortunately, back then they were told that Kerry was an adult, that she had chosen the lifestyle, and that if she wasn’t a threat to herself or others, there was nothing that [law enforcement] could do,” Kathie Cummings said, according to the sheriff’s office news release.

When she was missing her sister, Kathie Cummings said she would search the NamUs website, “scanning for mention of her tattoo and searching through the pictures of the Jane Does.”

Then, decades after her sister’s disappearance, Kathie Cummings finally got her answer.

Using Kathie Cummings’ DNA sample, the remains found in 1997 were identified as Kerry Ann Cummings, the sheriff’s office said.

Kathie Cummings remembered her sister as an artist, who was “beautiful, funny, smart” and could make her family laugh, according to the sheriff’s office news release.

“She was dearly loved,” Kathie Cummings told investigators.

Ford is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Eureka, where the body of Kerry Ann Cummings was found, is about 290 miles northwest of Sacramento.

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