Jacob Lyon: A Decade-Long Search Ends with Skeletal Remains Identified in Florida Panhandle
Jacob Lyon was Missing for Ten Years
Jacob Lyon: A Decade-Long Search Ends with Skeletal Remains Identified in Florida Panhandle
The Disappearance
For nearly ten years, the fate of Jacob Lyon remained one of the Florida Panhandle’s most haunting mysteries. When the 19-year-old Niceville resident vanished in late 2015, he left behind no goodbye, no clues, and no trail—only a devastated family and a growing list of unanswered questions.
Jacob was last seen alive in November 2015. At the time, he was struggling. According to records from The Charley Project, Jacob had been “staying with various relatives in Mossey Head and Niceville” while attempting to navigate a difficult period in his young life. In October 2015, just weeks before his disappearance, he had been involuntarily committed to a hospital for psychiatric care. Friends and family described him as someone who “ran with a tough crowd,” a young man trying to find his way through personal darkness.
His mother, Judy Lyon, didn’t report him missing immediately—perhaps hoping he would turn up on his own, as troubled young men sometimes do. But when three months passed without a single phone call, text message, or sighting, she walked into the Niceville Police Department on February 1, 2016, and officially reported her son missing.
The Investigation
Niceville Police immediately classified Jacob as a missing/endangered person, recognizing the vulnerability of a young man with mental health struggles who had no known resources or stable living situation. The department assigned the case to Detective John Lee—now Lieutenant Lee—who would remain its champion for the next decade.
Within days, investigators began the exhaustive work of tracing Jacob’s final movements. They interviewed family members, friends, and acquaintances, analyzing cell phone data in hopes of establishing a geographic footprint. Search teams were deployed throughout Florida and surrounding states, some operations employing cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar to probe remote areas where a body might have been concealed.
Over the years, more than 20 tips flowed into the department—from supposed live sightings in various states to claims about the location of remains. Each was investigated thoroughly. None panned out.
“Some of these searches involved cadaver dogs, the use of ground-penetrating radar, but unfortunately, none of the more than 20 tips ranging from locations of a body to live sightings proved to be useful,” Niceville Police Chief Mark Hayes would later explain.
Yet the Niceville Police Department refused to let Jacob become a statistical cold case. Lieutenant Lee continued working closely with Jacob’s mother Judy throughout the decade, keeping her informed, following up on leads as recently as late 2025. The department collected DNA samples from family members early in the investigation, preserving them for the day—if it ever came—when remains might be found.
The Discovery
That day arrived on October 20, 2022, though investigators wouldn’t know it for more than three years.
A man clearing a wooded area in Miramar Beach, Walton County, stumbled upon skeletal fragments in a small lot that linked up to a subdivision just off U.S. Highway 98. The location was notable—sandwiched between tourist destinations and residential developments, behind what was then a Sleep Inn hotel in an area that has since been redeveloped.
Walton County Sheriff’s Office deputies and the District 1 Medical Examiner responded to the scene. Preliminary examination suggested the remains belonged to a human between the ages of 13 and 20. But identification would prove complicated.
The medical examiner’s office conducted its forensic testing, but the degradation of DNA from environmental exposure and the passage of time made extraction challenging. In October 2024, the examiner’s office transferred custody of the remains to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, requesting advanced DNA analysis through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The samples were submitted to FDLE’s laboratory in November 2024. For the next two months, forensic scientists worked to extract viable genetic material from the degraded bones—a process complicated by environmental exposure and limited genetic material.
The Identification
On January 21, 2026—nearly ten years after Jacob Lyon was last seen alive—the DNA results came back. The remains found in that Miramar Beach wooded lot were a match to the DNA samples Lieutenant Lee had collected from Jacob’s family a decade earlier.
“That DNA sample was compared to the original sample that Lieutenant Lee, then Detective Lee, gathered from Jacob’s family, and we were able to make that positive confirmation and identification of Jacob from that,” said Major Dustin Cosson of the Walton County Sheriff’s Office during a joint press conference with Niceville Police.
For Judy Lyon, the news brought a devastating mix of relief and renewed grief. Her son was no longer missing. But he was gone.
“Ten years is a long time. But Jacob is home. Jake is back with his family, and family can make a little bit of closure,” Major Cosson said. “My number one priority was to try and find closure for his mother. Judy has been working with me fairly closely this entire time,” Lieutenant Lee added.
The Investigation Continues
The identification of Jacob’s remains marks not the end of the case, but the beginning of a new phase. With a body recovered, investigators can now work to determine how Jacob died—a question that carries the weight of potential foul play.
Walton County Sheriff’s investigators, now working in partnership with Niceville Police, have launched a formal death investigation. The scene where Jacob was found offers both challenges and opportunities. The Sleep Inn behind which he was discovered no longer exists; the area looks “completely different” than it did in 2022, according to Major Cosson. Investigators are reviewing Niceville Police Department’s decade of reports, searching for any mention of Miramar Beach, the individuals connected to that area, or patterns that might explain how a Niceville teen ended up dead in Walton County.
“This is not by all means the end of an investigation but it’s the furtherance in the start of another investigation,” Major Cosson emphasized. “We don’t know right now exactly what happened, but what we do know is that we have a positive confirmation of Jacob Lyon, and that we’ll be continuing the investigation and the partnership.”
Law enforcement officials are asking for the public’s assistance in solving the mystery of Jacob’s death. Anyone with information about Jacob Lyon’s activities in late 2015, his associates during that period, or circumstances surrounding his death is urged to contact the Walton County Sheriff’s Office at 850-892-8111.
For a family that has waited ten years for answers, closure remains incomplete until they know not just where Jacob died, but how and why. Jacob Lyon came home on January 21, 2026—but the truth about what happened to him is still out there, somewhere in the shadows of that Miramar Beach wooded lot and the lost years of a troubled young man’s final days.