Suffolk police: Remains found years apart belong to same missing man

Human remains found around seven years and about 18 miles apart belong to the same man — a Pakistani actor's son who went missing in 2009, Suffolk police said Friday.

A skull found in 2016 in the Ronkonkoma woods was matched with DNA to a torso recovered from a Melville landfill in 2009, police said. A Suffolk police spokeswoman did not say when that determination was made.

The two-year anniversary of the Ronkonkoma discovery was Monday.

The victim was Ali A. Fakhri, the son of the late Pakistani actor Jamil Fakhri, police said. The son's disappearance and his famous father’s pleas for information were widely covered in Pakistan, and its embassy in Washington, D.C., interceded on his behalf, according to media reports.

The son, 36, was reported missing to Suffolk police in March 2009, the police spokeswoman said. A year later, the remains of the son that initially were recovered were returned to his family in Pakistan, according to the media reports. The elder Fakhri died in 2011; a Pakistani newspaper called The Nation said he was "in deep distress" over his son’s disappearance.

The Nation reported that the son had been kidnapped and later killed in the United States. 

In May 2009, workers with the 110 Sand Co. on Spagnoli Road were moving debris when they found the torso of a man; investigators said they searched but found no additional body parts.

At the time, Det. Sgt. Edward Fandrey said the remains were likely dumped elsewhere before being carted to the Melville site. "This body came here in a truck, in a load of landfill," Fandrey said.

On Aug. 20, 2016, the police said, a bicyclist discovered the skull in the woods off Express Drive North.

Police said the remains had been in the woods for a long time, and no determination had been made about whether the person was a homicide victim.

Using the national Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, the police said DNA from the skull was matched with the torso. CODIS provides for the sharing of DNA information among local, state and national databases.

The Suffolk police spokeswoman did not say when the DNA match was made or what role the FBI or the New York City Police Department played. Both agencies were involved in the initial investigations, media reports said.

She said the investigation into the homicide is continuing.

Mohammad Hanif Channa, community welfare counselor with the Pakistani Consulate in New York City, said the victim's father "was a very famous actor."

"He in fact was in a famous television series on police culture and he became very popular based on that series,” the consulate official said.

The program, “Andhera Ujala,” depicted “how the police conducted themselves in the country, in a rural setting,” and the actor played a police inspector.

The son graduated from Punjab University with a business degree and moved to the United States around 2000, the Dawn newspaper in Pakistan reported in 2010.