Remains of trafficked Texas teen identified years after murder — family says police failed her
Advanced DNA testing has confirmed that remains found in 2020 belong to Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old Houston girl trafficked and murdered, with her family saying law enforcement missed repeated chances to protect and identify her.
Texas's attorney general's office announced on 28 July that advanced DNA testing conducted over the past year had positively identified the remains of Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old from Houston. Skull fragments, clothing and an earring were recovered beneath a bridge near a jogging trail in Missouri City on 29 January 2020, about three weeks after she vanished. Her mother, Robyn Cory, said Kristen had been bound with duct tape, beaten and stabbed to death; the rest of her body has never been found, and the homicide investigation continues.
Groomed and trafficked
An honor-roll student who hoped to join the military, Kristen was groomed by a sex-trafficking gang in 2019, initially through a boy at her school and later via social media. In November 2019 she was lured from home and forced to work Houston's red-light district before police recovered her nine days later. Her statements helped convict three traffickers, but her mother says Houston police never offered the family witness protection despite Kristen's fear for her and her relatives' safety.
In January 2020, after being relocated to her grandparents' home for safety, Kristen disappeared again and was never seen alive again. Her family's request for an Amber alert was denied because she was classified as a runaway, and a request to trace her phone was also turned down.
Years-long delay in identification
Although her remains were found just weeks after she vanished, conventional DNA testing could not identify them, according to the attorney general's office, which said advanced testing was required. Cory says the medical examiner told her DNA testing had in fact been possible earlier. A 2021 unidentified-person profile in a national database included a facial sketch resembling Kristen, but her repeated requests to investigate the link went unanswered for years until a cold case unit took over in 2025. Since her daughter's disappearance, Cory has helped rescue other trafficking victims and pushed for safety improvements in a Houston area known for trafficking.
