Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

The NamUs profile of Josephine County John Doe 1978 was removed on March 6, 2026, indicating that he had been identified. On  March 24, 2026 it was announced that  John Doe has officially been identified as Mark Smith , who had been missing since 1974. Close-up of Mark Smith from a photo taken at his sister's wedding in September 1973. Image from the Unidentified wiki and other sources. Mark was born on October 4, 1954. Sometime before his birthday in 1974, when he was 19 years old, Mark left his home in the city of Billings, Yellowstone County, Montana, having told his family that he intended to travel. He was never seen or heard from again.  It seems that he had never been reported missing. DNA research began on Josephine County John Doe 1978 in 2020, with investigative genetic genealogy being used starting in 2023. In 2025, researchers were able to identify a specific family line in John Doe's tree, for which one of the siblings, "appeared to have disappeared from rec...

I am happy to say that Emigrant Gap Jane Doe 1977 has been officially identified through DNA as Melinda "Pip" Beardsley. I have been in contact with a member of Pip's family who had reached out to me, her niece Janet, throughout part of this process, but had been waiting for confirmation from law enforcement before following up on this here on my blog.  Melinda was born in Michigan in 1946, the youngest of six siblings. She was a 31-year-old mother of two at the time of her death; one of her children was adopted out of the family at birth, while the other was in the care of relatives when Melinda disappeared. Melinda was reported missing to the Reno Police Department in November 2025 by two of her nieces and a half-nephew after the latest confirmation of life that they could find was notification of a DUI charge in Reno in December 1976. She was last known to be living in Carson City, NV.  A fingerprint match was made between Melinda and the then-unidentified decedent so...