Shaun Daniel Brauner Obituary, Death; – Authorities said they have identified a homicide victim whose remains were discovered in Monroe County nearly 40 years ago.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release Thursday they had identified the remains of Shaun Daniel Brauner, a Detroit man whose family had last seen him in June 1986. Brauner’s remains were discovered partially decomposed on Oct. 17, 1986 in a wooded lot on Lewis Avenue in Ida, Michigan, the sheriff’s office said.
Though authorities were able to determine the remains belonged to a white male between the ages of 35 and 45 years old, they said they were not able to connect them to a known person at the time, despite an investigation.
A medical examiner had determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head; the manner of death was ruled homicide.
It wasn’t until fall 2017 that further headway was made in the case. Sergeant Detective Jeff Pauli with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Detective Bureau sent samples of Brauner’s remains to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification (NDIS) using funding from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
At the center, investigators extracted a sample of Brauner’s DNA and entered it in to a system for indexing DNA: Combined DNA Index System, also called CODIS. By 2019, the case was reassigned to Detective Jeff Hooper. Hooper and the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office sought other ways to identify the victim, but did not see immediate success.
Two years later, in fall 2021, Hooper was notified by NDIS that a possible match had been made with a family DNA sample. The organization told Hooper the sample may belong to the sister of the victim.
Hooper spoke to who they believed to be the victim’s family. A family member told Hooper her brother – Brauner – had been missing since June 1986. It was believed at the time that Brauner was the victim of a homicide in Wayne County, a case that was adjudicated in summer 1990.
In November 2024, Monroe County detectives sent forensic evidenc
