LOS ANGELES (AP) – The skeletal remains found buried in the backyard of a missing couple’s former home were almost all destroyed in March 1995, the coroner’s office said Thursday.

Everything except parts of the skull were incinerated then interred in an east Los Angeles cemetery about 10 months after they were unearthed by a contractor excavating a hole for a swimming pool, said Craig Harvey, the operations chief at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

The body is thought to be Jonathan Sohus, who went missing along with his wife Linda nearly a decade earlier when a man now known as Clark Rockefeller was a tenant in their family’s San Marino guesthouse.

Rockefeller, who was arrested Aug. 2 in Baltimore after allegedly kidnapping his daughter in Boston, has been named a “person of interest” in the couple’s disappearance.

No one has been charged in the case, and Rockefeller has denied any involvement in the disappearance.

The Sheriff’s Department has said Rockefeller is really Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. The German native used many aliases and went by Christopher Chichester while living in California.

Disposal of unidentified remains is a common practice, Harvey said.

“We are limited on space here,” he said. “We would apply the same standard to a full body.” Investigators in 1994 established the bones were those of a short, white man – a description matching Sohus. A DNA test was not pursued because he was adopted and had no known biological relatives to compare genetic codes with. His dental records were lost.

Investigators have sent what’s left of the skeleton to a lab in Richmond, Calif., for new DNA testing in hopes of finding a match on a national database.

Investigators were also looking at remnants of a blood stain that was found in the guesthouse after the bones were unearthed.

Linda Sohus’ body has never been found. Harvey said investigators have not ruled out further exploration of the backyard to see if her body is there.

Should Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives decide to return to the yard, Harvey said several options would be available to them to see beneath the surface.

The coroner’s office has a cadaver-sniffing dog – a female German Shepherd named Indiana Bones – that has proven successful at locating bodies.

Investigators could also send in a forensic archaeologist who can look for signs of the soil having been disturbed. Harvey

“Everything deserves a shot,” Harvey said.

The coroner’s office receives up to 9,000 bodies a year and as many as 300 of them are unidentified, Harvey said. John and Jane Does can be disposed of in as little as 20 days after attempts have been made at identification, though nowadays DNA samples are always taken and bones are often kept for much longer in separate laboratories.

AP-ES-08-14-08 2120EDT