Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson! In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m diving into one of the most unusual and haunting cases I’ve come across in years, a case where one man was identified not once… but twice. It starts with a simple walk along a Northern California beach, where a family discovers a human bone in the sand. What follows is a forensic journey that stretches back decades, connecting that bone to Walter Carl Kenney, a man who disappeared in 1999 and had already been identified years earlier from different remains. As a forensic death investigator, I walk you through the timeline, the science, and the unsettling reality of how this case unfolded. From partial remains and surgical hardware to the incredible role of forensic genealogy, this story challenges everything we think we know about identification, closure, and what it means to truly “solve” a case. But even with a name… we’re still left with the biggest question of all: what actually happened to him? This episode discusses partial remains, unresolved loss, and the complexities of cases shaped by time, distance, and the unpredictable power of the ocean. It’s not just a mystery, it’s a reminder that sometimes, even when we find answers, they come in fragments. * Listener discretion is advised. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 00:06   Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.   00:24   Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Matson, and I am starting to get my voice back, but I’m still super squeaky.   00:42   I had to go to the doctor today, and I have a sinus infection. It’s weird because everybody got this crap from me, and then they’re all well now, and I’m still hanging on to it. So it’s been about three weeks.   00:55   Now I’m on Augmentin and Flonase, and then I had to get some of my shots for school. So yeah, not a fun day for me. Trying to get over it. A little short of breath when I start coughing, but I feel fine.   01:10   It’s so weird. I think a big part of it is allergies. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to be going to be on the crumb next weekend. Or actually, it’s the 10th. So I’ve got 10 days. But I’m so excited.   01:27   I’m starting to get my merch in. I ordered t-shirts, hoodies. I have tumblers. I have tote bags. I have lapel pins. It’s so fun. And I’m just looking forward to meeting a lot of true crime lovers there.   01:46   So if you’re going, give me a shout out. Definitely like to meet you. I wanted to talk this week about a different kind of story, Twice a John Doe. And this is kind of one that I’m excited to kind of input what I have to offer as a forensic death investigator because there’s a lot of things with this story that are super interesting.   02:14   You’ll see what I’m talking about. But just imagine a family is walking a Northern California beach doing something that’s pretty ordinary, looking for shells, watching the surf, letting the afternoon move slow.   02:29   And then they see a long bone sticking out of the sand. It’s not driftwood. It’s not a branch. It’s a human bone. And attached to it is surgical hardware. The beach is Salmon Creek. It’s in Sonoma County, California.   02:47   And we’re looking at June 17th, 2022. At first, of course, there’s no name attached to this leg bone. It’s just another entry in the ledger of unidentified dead people. But nearly four years later, forensic genealogy actually gives that bone a name.   03:07   And that is Walter Carl Kenney. He is a former banker from Santa Rosa who had been missing since 1999. Now, what makes this story even stranger is that this is not the first time that Walter Kinney had become a John Doe.   03:25   It was the second. This is twice John Doe. The story of a man who disappeared, the ocean that returned him in pieces, and the forensic science that finally linked two mysteries into one. This is kind of interesting because, you know, in the death investigation world, when bones are found, no one really gets to make the decision as to whether or not they’re human except our forensic anthropologists at the medical examiner’s office.   03:59   Many times when I worked there, we would send them pictures of bones if bones were found, and the doctor had to determine whether or not they were human. And many times they weren’t, but many times they were.   04:14   And sometimes to the normal person like you and I, it wouldn’t be obvious. I mean, unless it’s like a skull or something like that. So today’s episode is about one of the strangest cold case identifications I’ve come across in years.   04:31   It has all the elements of a classic unsolved mystery. Missing man, dangerous coastline, partial remains, family distance, years of uncertainty, and eventual breakthrough through DNA. But what sets us apart is the shape of the timeline.   04:51   Because in this case, the man at the center of the story appears to be, to have been identified and then identified again. And it’s not because investigators made a mistake the first time. It’s not because there were two different men, but because the Pacific Ocean kept giving the case back.   05:12   Now, before I go further, this episode discusses partial human remains, disappearance, alcoholism, incarceration, estrangement,