Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

At about 4:45pm on Wednesday, September 19, 1979, the body of a teenager or  young man  was discovered in the Los Angeles riverbed, north of the Patata St overpass/trestle in Bell, LA County, CA. He had been deceased for only some hours prior, and his face is recognizable. The cause and manner of death have not been released. Artist rendering from NCMEC. John Doe was 15-25 years old, 5'8, and 129 lbs. He was white and had brown eyes and short, thin, light brown hair. A reconstruction of him created by NCMEC is available. When found, he was wearing blue slacks; a Hawaiian print shirt from K-Mart; a brown leather belt; underwear; and white socks with a red stripe at the top. John Doe's dentals, DNA, and fingerprints are all available for comparison. He has six MP exclusions on NamUs: John Doe is not Donald Rexroth (whose remains were found in 2017 and IDed in 2019), David Schwarzschild, Lawrence Colton, Titanic Hagen, Mitchel Weiser, or Robert Keck. Anyone with information shoul...

Sandra JoAnn Rushing was born on August 27, 1960 in Denver, CO to parents Joe Bailey Rushing Jr and Shirley Joan Rushing (nee Otey). Sandra's mom's side of the family was from Denver, while her father's side was from Abilene, TX. Sandra had two older siblings, sister Brenda Kay Tate (nee Rushing) and brother Terry Joe Rushing. Brenda was a little less than four years older than Sandra, as she  was born in late 1956 . Terry was born in late September 1959, making him eleven months older than Sandra; despite this, the two of them were in the same grade in high school. This is likely because Sandra's birth date was on the cusp of the cut off; she was only seventeen years old when she graduated. Sandra's 1978 Lakewood High School senior yearbook photo. The Rushings lived in Denver proper up to at least 1969, though by 1973 they were living in Lakewood, Jefferson County, CO, a suburb of Denver. All three Rushing children went to Lakewood High School. Both Sandra and Terr...

Rosa Linda Zuniga was born on January 22, 1953 in San Antonio, TX, the oldest of four children born to parents Leonardo Cortez Zuniga and Maria Yrenia "Irene" Cantu. Her first name(s) may have been Linda Rosa, Rosalinda, or Rosalind; I am using the most common version I could find, which was also used in the TX birth index on Ancestry. Both sides of the Mexican-American family had deep roots in Texas, spanning all the way back to when the land was still a part of the Republic of Mexico. By 1959, the Zuniga family moved to Watsonville, Santa Cruz County, CA. The parents split up sometime afterward, with Leonardo moving to Ohio and all four children living with their mother. Soon afterward Irene remarried to a man named Jose "Joe" Gamez (occasionally misspelled as Gomez). Rosa Linda graduated from Watsonville High School in June 1971. By July of that year she was taking classes at Cabrillo College, a community college in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, while also working as...

On Sunday, October 21, 1979, a motorist became stranded in a rural area of Clark County, NV, somewhat near Las Vegas. There they discovered human remains "wrapped and bound in a sheet," lying partially in a culvert pipe on I-15 near mile marker 61, near Apex (a neighborhood of North Las Vegas). The decedent's torso, as well as one or more limbs and one or more hands were not recovered. The remains were not recognizable due to being partial skeletal parts only.  The decedent is believed to have died sometime in 1979. While the direct cause of death has not been released publicly, it is known that the decedent was the victim of a homicide.  It was determined that the remains were those of a white female. Most sources state that Jane Doe was 17 to 35 years old; furthermore, her age group on NamUs is listed as "Adult - Pre 40." However, the Clark County Medical Examiner's Office profile regarding Jane Doe lists her estimated age as 17 to 18 years old.  Jane Doe...

Thomas Cristiano was born on December 19, 1950 in Denver, Colorado, where he also spent much of his early childhood. He lived with his parents, Joseph Frank Cristiano and Verna Louise Cristiano (nee Place), and his siblings, David and Virginia. Thomas attended high school in Montrose, Montrose County, CO, where his parents were living at the time of their son's death. Some sources may spell the family's surname as "Christiano." Thomas's father had moved his family to Montrose "to get away from the crime and violence we saw there" in Denver. Thomas, however, eventually went back to Denver to be near a school where he was taking a "correspondence computer course." He  was employed at the Western Drive Inn on East Colfax Avenue in Denver. Thomas also had an interest in art. According to letters written to his family, he had planned to paint a night scene of the State Capitol Building at some point.  Photo from CBI. Late in the evening of Friday, J...

Yvonne Quilantang was born on July 11, 1957 in San Francisco to parents Terezo Vincent Quilantang and Evelyn Marie Quilantang (nee Leroy). Yvonne and her siblings were biracial, half white, half Asian: their father, Terezo, was an immigrant from the Philippines. Some sources from the 1970s mistakenly list Yvonne as Black. However, thorough research on Ancestry indicates that she was not Black, but instead Filipina. She was baptized Catholic. She was the youngest of six children: her older siblings are Sharon, Vincente, Michael, Linda, and Thomas; the latter was only two years older than her. Yvonne's father was a seaman. Her mother eventually grew unable to care for her, so Yvonne was "taken into a foster home, where she had lived almost since she could remember." She seemed to still be in contact with her birth family. From the June 24, 1973 edition of the  San Francisco Examiner   In early June 1973, Yvonne was 15 years old and attending Opportunity II High School. She ...

Lynn Mueller, 21, was found dead in her bedroom by her husband Mike, 27, at their house at 880 E Main St in Ventura, Ventura County, CA on Friday, May 30, 1975. That day Mike had taken Lynn to the dentist because she had a toothache. Once they got back to their home, Mike made Lynn some soup, then left for his job on the night shift at an oil refinery "off the Rincon." Photo from the City of Ventura Cold Case Investigations page. Lynn, who was devoutly religious, went next door to a service at a Pentecostal church on Kalorama and Main St that evening. Other churchgoers stated that they last saw her at church  at 9:30pm . After returning home, Lynn called Mike at work and chatted with him for about 15min. A neighbor then reported seeing Lynn speaking with a man on her porch at approximately 10:00pm. The man was described as light haired and wearing a short jacket, perhaps a uniform jacket. The witness description matched that of a man who had argued with Lynn regarding religio...

Deana and an older girl, Tonna, were adopted from an orphanage in Hong Kong by their (white) foster father Dean Hooper in 1966; because of this, Deana and Tonna regarded each other as sisters. Deana, her adoptive parents, her older sister, and a brother lived together in Sonoma. Eventually her sister became married and moved to Vallejo, Solano County, CA. Deana lived in Yountville at the time with her family. Photo from the March 13, 1975 edition of the  Vallejo Times-Herald . Edited by me for clarity.   At the time of her death, Deana, 18, was staying with her older sister, Mrs Tonna Albright, who lived at 901 Georgia St in Vallejo. According to the missing person's report filed by Tonna on July 15, 1974, on Monday, July 11th, she and Deana had attended a party at the Enlisted Men's Club on Mare Island, and when it came time to go home, Tonna couldn't find Deana. That was the last time she was seen. When Deana did not return home following the party, Tonna called their fat...

John Croasdale was last seen on Sunday, February 13, 1977 in North Highlands, Sacramento County, CA. He left his residence for San Francisco, and has never been seen or heard from since. CA DMV photo circa 1971. Accessed from NamUs. John is a white male who was 29 years old, 5'11, and 160 lbs at the time of his disappearance. He has blue eyes and straight brown hair. When he went missing his hair was collar-length, and he had a mustache. He also had a tattoo on his left forearm; a description of it is unavailable. It is unknown what he was wearing when he disappeared. He is classified as Missing on the Doe Network.  Very few details are available in his case. According to NamUs, John was 29 when he went missing, and his current age as of July 29, 2025 would be 77 years old. From this it can be gleaned that his date of birth was sometime between July 30, 1947 and February 13, 1948, inclusive.  There is only one rule-out on his exclusion list, Vacaville John Doe 1979 . It is unk...