Lyon County murder victim identified after nearly 30 years; investigators hope new info will solve case
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Wed, 05/26/2021 - 9:43am
For the past two years, the Major Crimes Division of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office has been actively investigating the unsolved murder of an unknown caucasian male whose body was discovered on March 12, 1992, in Sand Canyon in the southern portion of Lyon County.
The victim (who had been murdered the year prior, in 1991) had remained unidentified for 29 years since his death (28 years since his discovery) and had only been known as Sand Canyon John Doe.
Then, in July of 2020, the LCSO Major Crimes Division — working with Parabon NanoLabs Snapshot out of Virginia, as well as Parabon’s Chief Genetic Genealogist, CeCe Moore — was able to narrow down a list of potential family members of Sand Canyon John Doe using genetic matches from the GEDmatch database and investigative genetic genealogy techniques.
On August 31, 2020, we were able to confirm the identity of the murder victim as 43-year-old Vincent Marion Trapp, originally from Sacramento, California. Vincent Trapp stood six-feet-six-inches tall, weighed 190 pounds, and had blue eyes and red hair.
After identifying Vincent Trapp, LCSO Major Crimes detectives traveled to two different states to interview persons of interest, and were able to establish a rudimentary timeline of his general whereabouts leading up to his death. Although we don’t know the exact date when Vincent Trapp moved to Nevada from California, we do know he was living in Douglas County (Topaz Ranch Estates) in late 1989 through the fall of 1990, and was a resident of Lyon County (Yerington) in the spring of 1991. It is believed that Vincent Trapp was murdered sometime between the spring and summer of 1991.
Currently, the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office and the Nevada Division of Investigation are asking for the public’s assistance in finding out any information regarding Vincent Trapp’s murder.
If you know anything about the murder of Vincent Marion Trapp, please contact Detective Lieutenant Jerry Pattison of the Major Crimes Division of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office at (775) 577-5206, or Investigator Matthew Wehn of the Nevada Division of Investigation at (775) 684-7412. If you wish to provide information anonymously, you can call or text Secret Witness at (775) 322-4900.
