PORT ANGELES — Authorities have solved a cold case nearly 18 years after a British Columbia teenager went missing and his remains washed up on the north Olympic Peninsula.

The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office and Mission RCMP confirmed that human remains found in Clallam Bay in 2008 belong to 17-year-old Jeffrey Surtel, who disappeared from his Mission, B.C., home in 2007.

Surtel vanished on April 29, 2007, with his family believing he left on his bicycle while they slept. A year later, a person walking along the beach near the old Silver King Resort in Clallam Bay discovered a shoe containing a sock and what appeared to be human skeletal remains. Clallam County Sheriff’s detectives collected the evidence, and investigators confirmed the remains inside of the shoe were part of a human foot. DNA testing at the time failed to identify the remains.

In 2024, with crowdfunding support, investigators sent the DNA to a private Texas lab for advanced testing. Early this year, forensic genealogy linked the remains to Surtel’s extended family, leading to a positive identification.

Authorities say no foul play is suspected, but the circumstances of his disappearance remain unclear. Investigators urge anyone with information to come forward.

The case is eerily similar to another case that the Sheriff’s Office, with the help of Othram, solved a cold case involving a human foot found inside a shoe near the mouth of the Elwha River in Port Angeles in 2021. Genetic sequencing proved that the remains were those of Sequim native Jerilyn Smith, who was reported missing in 2018, and is believed to have taken her own life.