Human remains found in Caldwell County last weekend have been identified as Jason Landry, the Texas State student who had been missing since Dec. 13, 2020. The Texas Attorney General’s office said investigators used DNA tests to confirm the identification on Sept. 23, 2026.
For Landry’s family, the result ends nearly six years of uncertainty. For investigators, it turns a missing-person case into a confirmed identification, but not a solved death. The Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office said the bones do not provide insight into Landry’s cause and manner of death, and deputies said there was no indication of foul play.
A Caldwell County resident found human remains on Sept. 8 east of Salt Flat Road, between Soda Springs and Biggs Road. Deputies later responded to a report of skeletal remains in the 1400 block of Biggs Road on Sept. 18 and asked the public not to speculate that the remains were Landry’s until testing was complete.
The identification matters because it answers the first question that has shadowed the case since Landry vanished: whether he would ever be found. It does not answer the more difficult one. The remains establish that the search has a name and a location, but not how the 21-year-old died or what happened in the hours before he disappeared. The Texas Attorney General’s office said it notified Landry’s family, and Ken Paxton said his Cold Case Unit would continue trying to solve cases and bring closure for Texas families and victims.
That leaves the case at a hard edge familiar to families in a cold case: a body identified, a long wait broken, and the central mystery still intact. The discovery has closed one chapter. The cause of Landry’s death remains open.
