NEZ PERCE COUNTY, Idaho – A murder case from 42 years ago in Nez Perce County has been taken off the shelf after DNA technology identified a previously unknown homicide victim as Dewayne Surls, who was once thought to have drowned in a car accident.
According to our partners at the Spokesman-Review, on June 14, 1982, Dewayne Surls and his friend, Michael Coffin, went missing while driving from Moscow to Boise. Paint from their car found on rocks near the Salmon River led police to believe they had crashed into the river outside Riggins. This was never confirmed, however, as river conditions made body recovery impossible. While Coffin’s body was found 25 miles downriver, Surls’ body remained missing—or so authorities believed.
According to the DNA company Othram, a body was later recovered from the Snake River near the mouth of the Grande Ronde River, about 100 miles from Riggins. The body went unidentified and was buried in an unmarked grave. In 2008, a sketch of the body was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Database.
The turning point in the case came last year when Nez Perce County Coroner Joshua Hall sent a DNA sample to Othram, hoping for answers.
“(I) heard about Othram at a training I was at and when I got back I knew we had a couple of unidentified remains here in the county,” Hall said. “When we got the results back we were able to identify who the deceased was.”
Now that the body has been identified, the investigation is set to continue.
