For nearly four years, the man pulled from the Arkansas River near Bixby had no name. His body, recovered on September 10, 2022, was too decomposed for investigators to identify through conventional means, leaving behind only rough estimates: a man somewhere between 30 and 70 years old, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, with gray-brown hair. Now, Bixby police say they finally know who he is — Rudolf “Rudy” Von Koerner — though how he died remains an open question.
Bixby police initially tried fingerprint database searches, public appeals, and manual examination of the man's distinctive body tattoos, but none of it produced a match, according to 102.3 KRMG. With traditional leads exhausted, investigators turned to a newer tool: forensic genetic genealogy. DNA from the remains was sent to Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs, which builds out family trees from genetic material to identify distant biological relatives, the station reports. Separately, KFOR.com confirms the identification was announced by the Bixby Police Department after the four-year investigation.
A Jail Photo Broke the Case Open
The genealogical trail eventually led detectives to a man known only as “Rudy.” That lead pointed them toward a 2021 booking photograph from the Pontotoc County Jail in Ada, Oklahoma, which showed body tattoos matching those documented on the remains recovered from the river, per the same account from 102.3 KRMG. It was the kind of connection that only comes together once genetic science narrows a nearly impossible search down to a single family line.
To lock in the identification, investigators located Von Koerner's biological sister, who verified the tattoos, while the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner matched prior medical and radiological records to the recovered remains, the station notes. Bixby police say the case involved help from a wide range of partners: the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, Parabon NanoLabs, the state medical examiner's office, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Pontotoc County Sheriff's Office, LeadsOnline, and Von Koerner's own family, according to KFOR.com. The involvement of California's corrections agency hints at a multi-state history for Von Koerner, though the dossier does not specify what that history entailed.
Cause of Death Still Unresolved
Identifying Von Koerner closes one chapter of the case, but not the central one. The remains showed evidence of physical injuries, and the cause and manner of his death remain under active investigation, according to 102.3 KRMG — leaving open whether he died from foul play, an accident, or something else entirely. Bixby police are now asking the public for any information about Von Koerner's death or his activities beforehand, per KFOR.com.
The stretch of the Arkansas River where his body surfaced runs through Bixby, a suburb of roughly 28,609 residents south of Tulsa, split across Tulsa and Wagoner counties along the riverbank, according to the City of Bixby's 2020 census figures. That section of river is heavily shaped by releases from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Keystone Dam upstream, where flows have reached as high as 85,000 cubic feet per second in 2026, creating swift currents capable of carrying submerged hazards downriver, as Hoodline has previously reported. Whether those river dynamics played any role in Von Koerner's death has not been determined.
Part of a Broader Pattern in Oklahoma
The technique that ultimately identified Von Koerner is becoming a familiar tool for Oklahoma cold case investigators. Parabon NanoLabs has previously partnered with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation on other long-unsolved cases, including the 2022 identification of 1995 murder victim Katrina Bentivegna in Caddo County and 2008 victim Angela Mason at Lake Thunderbird, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The approach reflects a broader statewide trend of leaning on genetic genealogy to resolve cases that had gone cold for decades.
Anyone with information about Von Koerner's death or his activities before he died is asked to contact the Bixby Police Department at 918-366-8294. The investigation into how he died remains ongoing, and police have not indicated when — or whether — that part of the mystery will be resolved.
