A decades-old mystery surrounding a missing Utah teen has been solved.
Utah police have identified the remains of a boy found in Arches National Park near Moab in 1983 as Robby Lynn Peay, 17, who vanished after running away from a youth treatment center in 1982. While the discovery closes a 41-year-old cold case, a homicide investigation is ongoing with Grand County detectives, according to Salt Lake City outlet Fox 13.
Robby, a resident of Provo, had run away from a Salt Lake City young treatment center in October 1982 and a missing person case was then opened, the Provo Police Department said in a March 19 statement on Instagram. In February 1983, an unidentified body was recovered from the Three Gossips area within Arches National Park in Grand County, Utah, authorities said.
“The body had a gunshot wound to the head and appeared to have similar characteristics to Peay,” the police said in their statement. “However, identification could not be confirmed due to decomposition of the remains.”
Meanwhile, Robby’s pickup truck was found months later, abandoned 350 miles away near Lake Powell in Utah. Provo police said in 2022 that “it appears that the truck was launched into the lake after fixing the steering wheel in place,” per Salt Lake City outlet KSL.com.
Despite the discovery of the truck, the missing person’s case went cold due to a lack of further leads, the police said in their latest statement. Robby’s family then filed to have him legally declared deceased in 1990, with a gravestone set up in a cemetery.
However, detectives from the department continued to review the case over the years and in 2018, one of them added Robby’s information to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), which was first launched in 2007.
A forensic dentist reviewing cold cases within NamUs noted Robby’s X-ray data had been entered using an incorrect number order and the corrected data resulted in a high percentage match with DNA taken from the remains. While this did not constitute an official result, it did give detectives a lead.
They discovered Robby was adopted and through genealogical research, located a surviving biological family member, an uncle, who provided a DNA sample. The teen’s body was exhumed, while NamUs discovered a previously unknown DNA profile for the remains from another county agency. The Utah Office of the Medical Examiner confirmed the samples matched.
“Robby Peay had been missing for over 40 years when the breakthrough finally came through dental records and DNA testing,” Provo Police Department Detective Sergeant Patterson said in a statement on Instagram. “With this crucial evidence, we were able to identify an unknown individual, bringing long-awaited answers to a family that had spent decades in uncertainty.”
