LYON COUNTY, Nev — The Major Crimes Division of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office reignited its investigation of the unsolved murder of an unknown white man whose body was discovered in Sand Canyon in Nevada nearly 30 years ago.
The body was discovered on March 12, 1992, roughly a year after his death in 1991. The canyon is in the southern portion of Lyon County in Nevada.
The Lyon's County Sheriff's Office confirmed on Aug. 31, 2020, that Vincent Marion Trapp, a 43-year-old man from Sacramento, was the man who was found in Sand Canyon, Nevada.
The Lyon County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Division, working with Parabon Nanolabs’ Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore, narrowed down a list of potential family members of Trapp before they identified him. They used genetic matches from the GEDmatch database, a free DNA site, and investigative genetic genealogy techniques.
LCSO Major Crimes detectives traveled to two different states to interview people with connections to this case. They established a rudimentary timeline of where Trapp was before his death, including that he at one point moved from California to Nevada, living in Douglas County, Nevada from 1989 to 1990 and Lyon County, specifically Yerington, in the spring of 1991. Detectives said they believe Trapp was murdered in the spring or summer of 1991.
The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office and the Nevada Division of Investigation are still investigating Trapp's murder. If anyone has any information, the departments ask that people contact Detective Lieutenant Jerry Pattison at (775) 577-5206 or Investigator Matthew Wehn at (775) 684-7412. If people want to provide information anonymously, they can call or text Secret Witness at (775) 322-4900.
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