Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

Yesterday, July 28, 2026, it was announced that  Arvin Jane Doe 1978  has been identified as Michelle Louise Collier, a 15-year-old girl from Fresno who had been missing since February 1978. Her remains were found three months after her disappearance, and she was unidentified for nearly 48 years.  This is the fourth formerly-unidentified decedent featured on this blog to be identified since I first posted about them. Michelle Collier. Photo released by KCSO. Accessed from Bakersfield Now . With Kern County law enforcement (LE) unable to make an identification, the girl found in the grape vineyard on June 21, 1978 was buried in Arvin Cemetery in November 1978 as a Jane Doe. The investigation was reopened and Arvin Jane Doe's remains were exhumed in August 2007, and samples of her DNA were obtained at that time. Those bone samples were sent to the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) in April 2008; the CA DOJ then submitted them to Othram by March 2025. Using Forensic ...

  Very little information is available online about Sean Kenneth Phelan. He was born on February 2, 1960, possibly in a state other than California, as I could not locate him in the CA Birth Index.  For his freshman (1974-1975) and junior years (1976-1977), Sean attended Newport Christian High School in Newport Beach, Orange County, CA. The 1975 yearbook misspelled his first name as "Sian." The 1975-1976 yearbook is not available on Ancestry, but it seems likely that Sean attended the same school his sophomore year. He is not present among seniors in the school's 1977-1978 yearbook; from this it seems that he likely either transferred to another school for that year, or dropped out entirely. According to Ancestry, at an unknown time Sean lived at 22 Lewis in Irvine, Orange County, CA. Other sources also indicate that Sean was recently divorced at the time of his disappearance. I could not find any further information related to his marriage or divorce.  One of the photos ...