Skull-fetching retriever helps solve Texas escaped prisoner case AUSTIN Texas (Reuters) - The case of a convicted sexual predator who was one of the most wanted men in America after escaping from a federal detention facility in Texas has been solved with the help of a Labrador retriever that discovered the man's skull. The dog, named Carly, found the skull in September and brought it to the Austin home of her owners. DNA testing indicates it belongs to Kevin Patrick Stoeser, who had been convicted of sexually abusing children, Hector Gomez, a supervisory deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service, said on Monday. No other human bones were found at the Austin-area site where the dog retrieved the weathered skull. It was tested against a U.S. law enforcement database of DNA material from prisoners. "On Nov. 5, we received written confirmation from the University of North Texas lab that the skull submitted for genetic testing was a match of Kevin Patrick Stoeser," Gomez said. Stoeser, a former U.S. Army soldier, escaped in October 2013 from the Austin Transitional Center, where he was serving the remainder of a 13-year sentence for four counts of child sexual assault and one count of possession of child pornography after being in military and federal prisons. In May, Stoeser was placed on a U.S. Marshals list of its 15 most-wanted fugitives. "He was a sexual predator and dangerous, posing a significant risk to our community," Gomez said. Stoeser, who would have turned 42 next month, was convicted in 2003 and dishonorably discharged from the Army after pleading guilty to the sex abuse charges. "There is no determination of the cause of death or the manner of death," Kendall Crowns, a deputy medical examiner for Travis County, told a news conference. Gomez said the search for Stoeser could have dragged on for years if the dog had not recovered the skull. Authorities had said the dog was 15, but Carly's owners said she was nearly 14. She gets out and is always bringing things home. This is the weirdest thing she has ever brought home," said Bonnie Vinklarek, the dog's owner. Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Dan Grebler and Peter Cooney