BEAVER COUNTY Remains are that of missing Pa. girl, 14

The Beaver County girl has been missing since 1994.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- DNA tests have confirmed a detective's hunch that human remains found in Ohio nine years ago are those of a girl who vanished from a town 70 miles to the east in Pennsylvania.
Although the remains of Sarah Rae Boehm, 14, were found Nov. 4, 1994, just four months after she disappeared from Rochester Township in Beaver County, it wasn't until Tuesday that police announced a positive identification.
The skeletal remains, found off Interstate 80 near Akron, were initially believed by investigators to belong to a woman approximately 20 years old, so no link was made, police said.
Even when a detective from Portage County called Rochester police in 1998 after seeing a flier about Boehm, the cases were not linked. The former Rochester police chief dismissed any correlation because he had received so many reported sightings of Boehm, police said.
When an extensive investigation three years ago failed to verify any of the reported sightings, police began investigating Boehm's disappearance as a missing person-homicide case.
Break in case
In April 2001, Detective Kim Clements of the Beaver County district attorney's office found a sketch of what the Portage County victim might have looked like and made the connection. The sketch was featured on the Web site of The Doe Network, an organization that tracks missing person cases.
"It was just something in my gut that told me that we were right about this one, not like the thousands of other leads we were running down," Clements said.
Files on the case have expanded from several pages to about 12 volumes, Clements said.
DNA tests done by the FBI were delayed because of a backlog caused by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and because the initial DNA sample was insufficient, police said.
Officials from Ohio and Pennsylvania are scheduled to meet Thursday to compare notes. Clements said investigators are getting closer to finding Boehm's killer.
"I'd say it's probable," Clements said.
On the evening of July 13, Boehm told her mother she was staying at a friend's house but never returned. A missing persons report was filed the next day, police said.
Boehm's family was told Monday that a positive identification had been made.