Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

UPDATE: Josephine County John Doe's NamUs page was removed on March 6, 2026, indicating that he has been identified. For more details, a full update can be found here .   On Tuesday, May 9, 1978, a crew working for a logging company was in the area of Holcomb Peak in Josephine County, OR, near the town of Williams in the same county. There they discovered partial human remains, including a skull and other bones in a wooded area. One or more limbs, as well as one or more hands, were not recovered. The remains were not recognizable, as they were partial skeletal parts only. Because of this, many things such as hair color, height, weight, and eye color could not be determined. Officers from the Josephine County Sheriff's Office, as well as search and rescue teams, scoured the area around the discovery site, "for clues to the identity of the victim and the cause of death." Despite this, no clues were found, and the cause of death is still undetermined.  According to c...

Essie Hiett, 47, who may use the nicknames Marge or Steele, is officially missing from downtown Oroville, Butte County, CA. She was last seen very early in the morning of Monday, February 13, 1978. At about 1am she left the Card Room at 1949 Montgomery St in Oroville, where she worked as a card dealer. She then went to Rusty Jack's, a bar on Oro Dam Blvd. While there she told friends about how she planned to catch a flight to Seattle that morning, as she and her husband had planned a vacation to visit their children. A friend of hers told LE that Essie had only had one or two drinks before she left Rusty Jack's at about 1:50am. She has never been seen or heard from again. Photo from NamUs. At about 3:30am, 1hr 40min later, a female nurse discovered what was later determined to be Essie's car on the side of Palermo-Honcut Rd, just north of the Honcut city limits, crashed into a guard rail. Soon after, the nurse reportedly was almost run off the road about a mile north of the...

At about 3:30pm on Monday, December 28, 1970, a hiker named Helmeth Mehden of Yucca Valley discovered a nearly complete skeleton in a mining area 22.5 to 22.7 mi east of the desert city of Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County, CA. The hiker reported the find to the local substation, and police recovered a skull, backbone, and leg bones of an unidentified person. The remains were sent to Wiefel's Mortuary. Authorities returned to the scene the following day once the sun had risen to make a more complete search of the area. The bones were found about 2.0 to 2.5 mi south of 29 Palms Highway/Highway 52, along Old Ironage Rd. This area is near Old Dale, a ghost town/former mining area. Officials determined that the skeleton had likely been dragged by animals to the spot where it was found from its original burial place about 30 ft away.  Location of Jane Doe's body off of Old Ironage Rd in relation to the original burial place about 30 ft away. Created by me using Google Maps...