IRONWOOD (WWJ) — Human remains found along the Hoover Dam in Nevada have been identified as a Northern Michigan man who vanished nearly three decades ago.
Construction workers discovered the remains in 2009. It took 15 years to identify them.
According to a social media post from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, two workers contracted to pour cement on Highway 93 on Nov. 11, 2009 stopped for a break near the Hoover Dam, about 120 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
One of them—while standing on the west side of the highway—spotted what appeared to be a bone. The men canvassed the area and found more bones and concluded they belonged to a human. They notified the National Park Service, who called the MCSO.
Construction workers kept searching the area. They discovered more bones, a sun-bleached pair of blue jeans, a damaged white towel, a sun-bleached red-t-shirt, a black tennis shoe and a green sleeping bag. After a second search, the MCSO gave the remains to the medical examiner’s office. Further attempts to generate leads over the years yielded no results.
Thirteen years later, in February 2022, the medical examiner’s office gave a Mojave County Sheriff’s Office detective a bone sample from the victim.
The bone sample were sent to labs in Arizona and Texas to complete DNA analysis that could be entered into CODIS (The FBI’s Combined DNA Index Section). All attempts to identify John Doe failed.
In April 2024, a genetics lab in Texas notified the Sheriff’s Special Investigative Unit that they received a grant to pay for Forensic Genealogy in this case. The lab created a DNA profile and uploaded it to the genealogy database for investigation by an assigned genealogist.
The sheriff's office said in October the genealogy report revealed John Doe had was a descendant of ancestors residing in Michigan. Investigators contacted his relatives and interviewed them.
From the interview,; they learned William Herman Hietamaki (who went by Herman) had not been seen since 1995 and had been traveling in the Southwestern U.S. Additional reference testing conducted on those relatives led to the positive identification of John Doe as Hietamaki.
Hietamki was born on April 4, 1950. He lived with his family in Trout Creek, in the Upper Peninsula. He went to high school and mechanic’s school in Michigan.
“He was known to hitchhike to various locations and lived a nomadic lifestyle,” the MSCO post read.
Hietamaki’s family last saw him when he went to visit his sister in New Mexico in 1995. A public records search revealed he had lived in Las Vegas at one point.
The MSCO said he also had a history of epileptic seizures. His cause of death could not be determined because of the state of his remains. Investigators estimated he died sometime between 2006 and 2008.