Teen’s remains identified six years after disappearance
The Texas attorney general’s office announced on 28 July that Kristen Galvan’s remains had been positively identified using advanced DNA testing conducted over the past year. Parts of her skull, clothing and an earring were found beneath a bridge beside a jogging trail in Missouri City, about 10 miles outside Houston, where law enforcement recovered them on 29 January 2020 — about three weeks after she disappeared.
Galvan was bound with duct tape, beaten and stabbed to death, said her mother, Robyn Cory. The rest of her body has never been recovered, and the Texas attorney general’s office has said the homicide investigation is ongoing. In January, The Guardian reported that Galvan’s death was first confirmed to her family through mitochondrial DNA extracted from one of her molars, with testing verifying a mother-child relationship with Cory.
Galvan, known by her nickname “Kiki,” was an honor-roll student who dreamed of joining the military. In 2019 she was groomed by a sex-trafficking gang through a boy acting as a scout at her school, after which gang members began contacting her on Instagram. On 1 November 2019 she was lured away from home by the gang, trafficked to buyers over social media and forced to walk Houston’s red-light district. Nine days later, police found her there and brought her back to her family. She arrived home deeply traumatized, fearful her traffickers would harm her or her family unless she went back to them.
“Kristen screamed at me, ‘They’re going to kill you. They have pictures of you all. They’re going to kill my brothers.’ I didn’t realise the hold they had over my child,” Cory said.
At that time, Galvan gave written statements that provided evidence that helped convict three men who trafficked her, and her phone was taken into custody. But Houston police did not offer the family witness protection, Cory said — a step she believes could have saved her daughter’s life. The Guardian has viewed an email her family sent to Houston police on 27 November 2019 seeking an update on the arrest of her trafficker, which said Galvan was very concerned for her safety, as well as the safety of her family.
“Two months before my baby was murdered, we were pleading with them for help,” Cory said. “We knew we were in danger. This could have all been prevented if she had been given protection after she gave evidence against her traffickers.”
Two law enforcement officials not involved in the case told The Guardian that providing witness protection to trafficking victims — particularly those whose traffickers have gang affiliations — is widely considered best practice. “If Kristen’s case had been taken seriously as an endangered trafficking victim rather than just a runaway, her life could have been spared,” said Betty Simons, a private investigator who worked on Galvan’s missing persons case for six years. “It didn’t need to end this way.” The Houston police department and the U.S. attorney’s office for the southern district of Texas, which prosecuted Galvan’s trafficker Aryion Jackson, did not respond to requests for comment.
As a precaution, the family relocated Galvan to her grandparents’ home in Spring, in Montgomery County, Texas. She went missing again in early January 2020 and was never seen again. Cory and Simons say her disappearance was not treated with sufficient urgency by the Montgomery County sheriff’s office, which denied the family’s request for an Amber alert. “I begged for an Amber alert, but law enforcement mislabelled her as a runaway. They don’t look for runaways,” Cory said.
Cory also asked investigators to ping Galvan’s phone to try to determine its location in the days following her disappearance, a request she said was also denied. The Montgomery County sheriff’s office, which led the missing-person investigation, did not respond to questions about its efforts. In a press release, the sheriff’s office said it assigned Galvan’s case to a human trafficking unit on 16 July 2020, seven days after she is believed to have been murdered.
Despite the remains being found three weeks after Galvan disappeared, investigators said they were unable to identify them using conventional DNA testing. “Missouri City police department attempted to identify the remains, but their condition prevented the development of an STR [short tandem repeat] profile, making advanced DNA testing necessary,” the Texas attorney general’s office said in a statement. Last week, however, Cory and Simons met with the medical examiner on the case, who told them DNA testing could have been conducted when the remains were first found — a statement they said contradicts the attorney general’s office. The Texas attorney general’s office and the Missouri City police department did not respond to requests for comment.
Cory said investigators told her in 2025 that no soft tissue sample had been collected before her daughter’s remains were chemically processed — with the “flesh scrubbed off them,” in her words — for a forensic facial reconstruction sketch artist, making DNA extraction after that process significantly more difficult. “How do you find a deceased missing child in your city and not properly sample DNA? She should have been identified years ago, in my opinion,” Cory said.
In 2021, a profile of an unidentified Jane Doe was listed on the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), estimating the victim to be between 12 and 18 and of Hispanic and American Indian heritage — lineages Galvan has from both sides. Cory said the case file included a forensic facial sketch that bore a striking resemblance to her daughter, and that her requests to detectives with the Montgomery County sheriff’s office and the FBI to investigate whether the Jane Doe was Galvan were not acted upon. In a 29 July press release, the sheriff’s office said it only received a tip that the Jane Doe might be Galvan on 8 July 2025. The Guardian has viewed text messages from 2022 in which Cory asked investigators to examine the Jane Doe profile — which she first mentioned to The Guardian in an interview in 2024.
“I had saved the Jane Doe profile because I always found myself awake at 4am, going back and just staring at the sketch,” Cory said. “I kept asking but they would never test her.”
Cory said the breakthrough came in early 2025, after the Montgomery County sheriff’s office’s cold case division took over the investigation and acted on her request. A detective then located the Jane Doe’s remains at the attorney general’s office, which had held them since 2022. “Nobody listened until the cold case detective did in March 2025,” Cory said. “The new detectives on the case have moved mountains.” Cory said she was grateful for the investigative work over the past two years by the cold case unit, Missouri City police and the attorney general’s office, but said she still has unanswered questions about what efforts were made during the first four years after her daughter disappeared.
During her five-year search, Cory helped recover and rescue other trafficked girls and advocated for safety improvements along Houston’s Bissonnet Street, an area long associated with trafficked sex workers. Her work contributed to the installation of barriers designed to disrupt trafficking activity. “The Galvan family’s unwavering commitment to seeking answers not only ensured Kristen was never forgotten but also inspired advocacy that continues to benefit vulnerable children, victims and families throughout the Houston community,” the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said in a statement.
Last week, Cory was permitted to spend time with her daughter’s remains at a medical examiner’s office. The remains were placed in a small square cardboard box labeled only with Galvan’s case number; Cory used a pen to write her full name, Kristen Marie Galvan, on the box and draw hearts, and placed a bouquet of flowers on top. “After all these years, I felt like I needed to be near her,” she said. “I carried the box. It was so light, but I could feel her with me.”
Cory is now planning a memorial at the site where her daughter’s partial remains were discovered in Missouri City. It will feature a cross illuminated with lights, she said, because “Kristen was scared of the dark.”