Police work to match human remains found in South Carolina to missing Pittsburgh-area woman

A woman from the Pittsburgh area went missing while traveling through North Carolina in 2021. Now police are trying to confirm a positive DNA match between her and human remains found in North Carolina in 2022.

Amber Rae Johnston never got on to her bus from Winston-Salem to return home to Westmoreland County after a trip to Arizona three years ago. Her last known location was in Charlotte, but investigators say new evidence links Amber Rae Johnston to Anson County.

Human remains were discovered in Anson in 2022 during the construction of a new middle school. Anson County Sheriff’s Office’s Captain over the Investigation Unit Brian Tice told our sister station WSOC that the remains likely belonged to Amber Rae Johnston.

“It’s not a positive identification at this time — but they said it’s a high likely possibility that the CODIS hit is a match from South Carolina for miss Johnston,” Tice said.

Amber Rae Johnston’s mother, Sharon Johnston said the years without her daughter have been hard with not knowing what happened. But now she said she has some answers.

“I cried like a baby...even though I knew,” Sharon Johnston said. “It was hard. it was really hard because no one deserves to be out there alone.”

Investigators are still not sure how Amber Rae Johnston ended up in Anson, Tice said. Her phone last pinged at a truck stop off of US 74 in Union County on Aug. 19, 2021. Her phone was deactivated the following day in Charlotte.

Trail photos captured a woman walking in the woods off Anson Highschool Road in Wadesboro on Aug. 22, 2021, Tice said. The woman was not fully clothed, wasn’t wearing shoes, and was using a makeshift walking stick.

“There was some clothing found with the remains that were consistent with what we see in the video,” Tice said.

The photos were uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in January 2024. That’s when investigators said they first made the connection between the remains and Amber Rae Johnston.

“The minute they put that on NAMUS I got flooded with about 100 calls,” Sharon Johnston said. “And it was about the middle of the night, and I looked, and I knew it was my daughter.”

Sharon Johnston said she thinks Amber may have traveled through Anson to visit an ex-boyfriend who lived in the Myrtle Beach area. He died in 2023 before Anson County took over. He did tell the local police that he had not heard from Amber Rae Johnston since she left Arizona.

Sharon Johnston hopes that with these developments, someone will come forward with more information.

“There’s someone out there that knows what happened.. and she just didn’t get there by herself,” Sharon Johnston said. “I just have to accept whatever it is... and try to move forward.”

Now, Amber Rae Johnston’s family awaits a final DNA match, which involves matching DNA from her daughter and Sharon Johnston. If it’s a complete match, Sharon Johnston said she wants to bring her daughter’s remains back to Westmoreland County to give her a proper funeral.

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