Advanced DNA Identifies Kristen Galvan After 6 Years as Mother Alleges 2 Police Failures
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 7
Advanced DNA Identifies Kristen Galvan After 6 Years as Mother Alleges 2 Police Failures
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 7
Summary
Texas officials said on July 28 that advanced DNA testing identified the remains of Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old Houston girl whose partial remains were found under a Missouri City bridge on Jan. 29, 2020.
Her mother, Robyn Cory, says law enforcement failed Kristen twice: first by not protecting her after she gave evidence against traffickers in 2019, and later by taking more than six years to identify her remains.
Three weeks after Kristen disappeared, investigators recovered parts of her skull, clothing and an earring; Cory says the rest of her body has never been found and the homicide investigation remains open.
Cory disputes official accounts of the delay, saying detectives ignored her 2022 requests to compare Kristen with a Jane Doe profile and that DNA could have been collected before the remains were chemically processed.
The case has become a broader indictment of how authorities handled a trafficked child they allegedly misclassified as a runaway, even as Cory's search helped drive anti-trafficking advocacy in Houston.