A man was recently charged in California with the killing of his ex-wife six years after her remains were discovered in a crawlspace beneath a home – and about two decades after when she went missing, according to investigators.

Jeff Maiorca, 53, faces a charge of murder in the death of Jill Maiorca, who was 29 when she was killed, authorities said in discussing what could be one of the latest cases in the US to be solved with modern DNA techniques.

Jill Maiorca’s disappearance was reported in the southern California city of Big Bear Lake in 2007, a statement from the local San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said.

The path to finding Jill Maiorca then began in late October 2020, when San Bernardino sheriff’s deputies received a call to investigate “a suspicious discovery in the crawlspace under [a] residence” in Big Bear Lake. The deputies and members of the Big Bear fire department ultimately located human remains in that crawlspace.

Although the remains couldn’t immediately be identified, an autopsy determined the manner of death in the case was homicide, the San Bernardino sheriff’s office statement said. The agency said its cold homicide case team in 2023 then submitted the unidentified remains for additional investigative DNA analysis.

Such analysis determined the remains were those of Jill Maiorca, according to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office also said that its investigators had come to consider Jeff Maiorca – who had been Jill’s husband and had filed to divorce her in 2004, court records showed – as a suspect.

Citing unspecified evidence, the sheriff’s office’s statement asserted that Jill Maiorca had been murdered in November 2006. Her remains were then concealed – “without the homeowner’s knowledge” – beneath the residence where they were later discovered, the sheriff’s office said.

The agency did not elaborate on the hiding of Jill Maiorca’s body.

Business records reviewed by the Guardian link Jeff Maiorca to a heating, ventilation and air conditioning company. Other records showed his divorce from Jill Maiorca was classified as one involving children.

The San Bernardino sheriff’s office said it arrested Maiorca on Monday. He was formally charged with murder as well as with the use of a deadly weapon, and he had an initial hearing on Wednesday in San Bernardino county superior court, as NBC News first reported.

Jeff Maiorca remained in custody on Saturday at the High Desert jail in Adelanto, California, records indicated. Multiple media outlets reported that he was being held there without bail, and he was tentatively scheduled to appear in court again on 12 October.