Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

Background  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 Rosalinda or Rosalind; I am using the most common version I could find, which was also used in the TX birth index on Ancestry. According to Rosa Linda's friend Ellen, she may have also gone by the nickname Rosie. 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). Photo courtesy of Ellen [last name withheld for privacy]. Accessed from FindAGrave. Rosa Linda graduated from ...

On Wednesday, November 15, 1972, two teenagers were chasing rabbits on a hillside when they discovered human skeletal remains in a shallow grave at the Baldwin Hills Reservoir in Los Angeles. The grave was about 125 yds east of Cloverdale Ave near the old Baldwin Hills Dam, and was believed to have been uncovered by recent rains, and/or the remains had been strewn about by animals. The skeleton was determined to be that of a woman of unknown/uncertain race. Jane Doe was a 17 to 30 year old female, though NamUs specifies that her estimated age group is "Adult - Pre-30." Furthermore, one contemporary newspaper article stated that she was estimated to have probably been, "between 20 and 25 years old, but [investigators] added the age could range anywhere between 17 and 34."  Jane Doe was about 5'1 tall in life. Her weight and eye color could not be determined due to the condition of the remains. While modern sources state that Jane Doe had reddish-brown hair, a con...