Human remains found in rural Coryell County, identified as missing Gatesville man since 2015

On November 20, 2024By Pranco

CORYELL COUNTY, Texas (KWTX) – The Coryell County Sheriff’s Office announced on Nov. 19 that skeletal remains found on a rural property had been positively identified as those of Cole Younger Middleton, a Gatesville man who has been missing since 2015.

Middleton was 21 when he was reported missing to Gatesville police by his mother, Julia Middleton, on September 29, 2015.

Deputies with the Coryell County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to an address on Riverbend Lane in Gatesville on the evening of April 23, 2022, in reference to a caller reporting suspected human remains on the property.

Sheriff’s Office deputies and volunteer firefighters from the Gatesville Fire Department searched the night and recovered additional remains, a folding pocket knife and a piece of a T-shirt.

On April 25, search teams arrived with Team Texas K-9s, a Central Texas-based nonprofit organization that provides K-9 search and rescue services to law enforcement officers and individuals in need, to assist in the search.

A search of the missing persons database at the time revealed two known missing Gatesville area residents: Middleton and another man, William Casey, who was last seen in 1988.

An investigator with the Coryell County Sheriff’s Office contacted Middleton’s family about the discovery. The remains were sent to North Texas for genetic and anthropological analysis.

Genetic testing revealed that the then-unknown individual’s samples were consistent with a male contributor who was a biological child of Julia Middleton.

Since then, the Coryell County Sheriff’s Office has attempted to further confirm that the remains were those of Cole Younger Middleton.

Gatesville Police removed Cole from the Texas Crime Information Center Missing Person Record on November 14, 2024.