Police: Remains found in Troy are not those of child that went missing in 2007

By Patrick Tine I Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS)
Troy, N.Y. — The human remains found earlier this week at the Burden Pond Preserve do not belong to Jaliek Rainwalker, the Washington County 12-year-old who disappeared in 2007.
In a news release Wednesday afternoon, Troy Assistant Police Chief Steven Barker said: “A dental comparison was conducted today to determine whether the remains were consistent with Jaliek Rainwalker. The result of that analysis has concluded the remains are not Jaliek Rainwalker. That information has been communicated by law enforcement personnel to a member of Jaliek’s family.”
Barker said further tests would be conducted next week to obtain “information regarding the potential gender, age and/or identity of the remains.”
Police on Monday descended on the preserve in South Troy after a woman found skeletal human remains early Sunday evening. A police source familiar with the investigation said the victim appeared to be a “mid-to-late teenager.”
Television station WNYT NewsChannel 13 first reported the news.
The preserve is among the places in Troy where police have searched for Jaliek, who was last seen Nov. 1, 2007. In June 2022, police searched an area near a baseball field in the preserve, without finding any sign of him. Jaliek was about 5-foot-6 when he vanished, State Police have said.
According to his father Stephen Kerr, who adopted him in 2003, the two stayed at a relative’s unoccupied home in Greenwich the night Jaliek reportedly disappeared. Kerr told police Jaliek was gone when he woke up the next morning.
No charges have ever been filed in the disappearance and no arrests made.
Senior area law enforcement officials, including the district attorneys of Washington and Rensselaer counties, visited the site Monday as investigators carried out a meticulous search of the area where the remains, which included a skull and ribs, were found.
When reached for comment Wednesday, Jaliek’s adoptive grandmother Barbara Reeley said, “I just feel shattered.”
The search for Jaliek has generated a number of false starts. A skull found in 2017 in a marshy area of the Hudson River near Troy was later determined not to belong to a child. The 2022 search in South Troy, not far from where the remains were found this week, also failed to yield anything. Reeley said State Police investigators chose to search that area based on a “credible tip.”
The twists in the case, which included a cryptic letter sent to the media and a search warrant carried out at his adoptive grandfather’s house in Greenwich, became fodder for true crime documentaries and amateur sleuths.
The Times Union did a story series and podcast examining the case on its 15th anniversary in 2022.
There are are more than two dozen people between the ages of 12 and 19 who have gone missing in the last five decades, including Suzanne Lyall, 19, of Ballston Spa who was last seen in 1998 on the University at Albany campus, and Craig Frear, a 17-year-old from Scotia who vanished in 2004.
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