Remains of 1986 Monroe County murder victim identified with DNA

Monroe County murder victim from 1986 identified with DNA

His skeletal remains were first discovered in a wooded lot on Lewis Avenue in Ida, Michigan on Oct. 17, 1986.

FOX 2 - The remains of a 1986 homicide victim has been identified as Shaun Daniel Brauner, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.

His skeletal remains were first discovered in a wooded lot on Lewis Avenue in Ida, Michigan on Oct. 17, 1986.

The backstory:

A witness directed county detectives to the scene where they found the partially decomposed human remains of Brauner, who was from Detroit.

Detectives treated this incident as a homicide and the remains were sent for an autopsy, where the medical examiner determined the remains belonged to a white male between the ages of 35 and 45 years old.

The cause of death was ruled blunt force trauma to the head in a homicide, but the investigation was never able to identify the remains after exhausting all leads, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office said.

In the fall of 2017, then-Sgt. Jeff Pauli with the county's detective bureau, sent samples of the remains through funding from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for DNA analysis.

In March of 2018 the UNTCHI extracted a DNA sample from the remains which was entered in the Combined DNA Index System.

In the fall of 2019, the case was reassigned to then-Detective Jeff Hooper, who with the assistance of the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office looked into other ways to ID the victim.

Hooper’s efforts were unsuccessful in identifying the decedent until the fall of 2021.

At that point the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification notified Hooper of a possible connection with a "family reference sample."

The sample possibly belonged to a sister of the decedent. Hooper met with a family member and learned her brother, Shaun Daniel Brauner of Detroit, Michigan was missing since June of 1986.

Hooper later learned that Brauner was believed to have been a victim of a homicide in Wayne County, Michigan.

The homicide case was adjudicated in Wayne County in the summer of 1990. In November of 2024, the Monroe County Sheriff Detective Bureau sent forensic evidence to Othram's Laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas,  hoping advanced DNA testing could identify the victim.

Othram scientists got a DNA extract from the skeletal remains and a profile was developed using Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing®.

The comprehensive profile was then compared to a potential relative using KinSNP® Rapid Relationship Testing. The analysis confirmed the relationship and helped investigators confirm the identity of the man.

Due to the outcome of the criminal adjudication in 1990, Sheriff Goodnough is now announcing that the Monroe County Sheriff’s Homicide investigation is closed.

Mr. Brauner’s remains were returned to his family for a memorial service. The services provided by Othram for this case were funded by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

In a release, Monroe County Sheriff Troy Goodnough said he is grateful to NamUs, the NIJ and RTI International for the support and assistance they provided the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in the successful identification of Shaun Brauner.