The Death of Bell John Doe, September 1979

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 to 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.

John Doe's NamUs page, #UP4399, was created on September 10, 2008 and last updated January 20, 2021. The NCMEC and NCIC case numbers are 1184184 and U170020176, respectively. 

Anyone with information should contact Investigator Betsy Magdaleno of the LA County Medical Examiner's Office at (323) 343-0512 or IDUnit@me.lacounty.gov. The agency case number is 1979-11760. According to NCMEC, individuals may also contact the LA County Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.

Note: John Doe was found four days before the fall equinox. See the Holiday & Events Reference Page for an explanation as to why this is being mentioned. 

Sources

NamUs 

NCMEC

WebSleuths

Doe Network 

Unidentified wiki

LA County Medical Examiner 

Note: I could not find any contemporary news reports about John Doe. 

Further Note: While this write-up was originally published on July 31, 2025, I regularly revisit cases, fix any typos or formatting errors, check for updates, hyperlink new posts, ensure that I have exhausted all sources, etc. When edits are extensive, I re-post the write-up. This post was last updated on October 1, 2025.