Skeletal remains found in a wooded area of West Dayton more than a year ago have been identified using DNA, but the cause of Daniel Bruce Wells’ death remains a mystery.

Dr. Kent E. Harshbarger, Montgomery County Coroner, announced Friday, that DNA samples from the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office had resulted in a positive match.

Wells, 47, had been working at a local department store just prior to his death and his last known address was 36 Henry Street in East Dayton, Ken Betz, director of the coroner’s office, said.

“He didn’t show up for work one day,” Betz said. “I am amazed that he lived and worked here locally and no one recognized him.”

Wells had only lived in Dayton a short time.

In November of 1990, he was convicted in Gregg County, Texas of one count aggravated robbery and one count of robbery. He was sentenced to concurrent 45-year and 40-year sentences, said Jason Clark, public information officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Wells was paroled from a prison in Tennessee Colony, Texas on June 18, 2010. He came to Ohio, with approval from his parole officer, to live with a relative. Clark said in July 2011, Texas authorities learned Wells had moved into a men’s shelter without permission and a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Dr. Russell Uptegrove, Montgomery County’s deputy coroner, performed the autopsy on Wells. He determined the body had been outside for up to two weeks.

According to reports from Wells family, that time frame fits.

Wells last spoke to his sister Kim Cosby, who lives in Arizona, on her birthday, July 12, 2011, Betz said. On July 27, 2011 -15 days after that telephone conversation — the remains of a white male were discovered in a wooded area near Westown Shopping Center.

Facial recognition was not possible on the badly decomposed body. Dental comparisons also aren’t an option. The man had dental work done at some point, but there was nothing to compare it to. Blood and tissue specimens were deemed unsuitable for testing due to the decomposition, ruling out any possibility of attributing the cause of death to a drug overdose.

There were no signs of trauma to the body. The cause of death remains unknown, Betz said.

DNA was extracted from the femur and entered into a database of missing persons.

A partial thumbprint was compared to 280,000 others in a local database via the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The Maimi Valley Regional Crime lab also ran it through a state database with up to 4 million fingerprints, then 50 million in the FBI’s. The search was expanded to include the U.S. Office of Homeland Security with 100 million fingerprints on file. There were no matches.

In a final identification effort, the coroner’s office, hired forensic artist Joanna Hughes, based at the University of Tennessee, to create a likeness of the man’s face using the victim’s skull, white erasers and an oil-based clay. In May, flyers that included the image were circulated around Dayton homeless shelters and the Veterans Medical Center, which is near where the remains were found.

No one stepped forward to identify the victim.

Betz said Wells death certificate will be amended to include his name and his cremated remains will be sent to his sister in Arizona.