A boy whose remains were found in a remote part of White Tank Mountain Regional Park in 1982 has been identified as Mitchell John Pauli, who was about 14 when he disappeared from Buckeye in the late 1970s, the DNA Doe Project announced Tuesday. The nonprofit, which uses investigative genetic genealogy to identify unidentified people, worked with the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office on the case. The office referred it in May with funding from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Further DNA testing confirmed Pauli’s identity, the project said. Pauli’s remains were discovered on April 22, 1982. At the time, authorities estimated he had died one to three years earlier. Investigators traced his family’s roots to Germany and found connections in Kentucky and Missouri before identifying links to St. Louis. A key lead was a boy born there in 1964 whose family moved to Buckeye in 1967 and lived about five miles from where the remains were found, said team leader Megan Pasika. “We came across a boy who was born in St. Louis in 1964, but we couldn’t find any proof of life for him,” Pasika said. “The crucial breakthrough came when we found that his family had relocated in 1967 to Buckeye, Arizona, where they lived just five miles from where our John Doe was found.” The team matched family connections with DNA evidence and submitted Pauli as a candidate to the medical examiner’s office, which conducted testing to confirm the identification. Arizona has one of the nation’s largest populations of unidentified people, and genetic genealogy has helped resolve several cases in the state. The identification gives Pauli a name after decades of being known to investigators as “John Maricopa County Doe.”