Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

At 2:13pm on Saturday, October 4, 1975, the body of an unidentified man was discovered in the All-American Canal in Mecca, Riverside County, CA. He had been killed from a blow to the head before a rope connected to a piece of iron (used as a weight) was tied around his neck; his body was then placed in the canal. It is believed that he died three to seven days before he was found, meaning his estimated DOD is somewhere between Saturday, September 27th and Wednesday, October 1, 1975, inclusive. The canal is controlled with a series of gates, and the distance to the last gate was about 8mi into the rural community of Mecca. The body was found face-down in the canal at the last gate. While all parts were recovered, his remains were not recognizable due to decomposition. John Doe was an 18 to 25 year old white and/or Hispanic male, with his estimated age group on NamUs being "Adult - Pre 30." He had straight, medium-length dark brown hair, with no facial hair. His eye color is un...

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 Sunday, August 24, 1980, a teenager discovered the remains of a girl in the Montecito Hills Regional Park at Griffin and Montecito in East Los Angeles. The teenager did not report the body to the police until six days later. At 10:00am on Saturday, August 30, 1980, the LA County Sheriff's Department (LASD) located the mummified remains where the teenager had indicated, on the ground at the base of a ravine in a remote, fairly inaccessible wooded area of steep hills and dense foliage 0.25mi east of the 110 Freeway. According to the Doe Network, it was determined that Jane Doe had been murdered, and that she was killed at the location where she was found. All parts were recovered. The decedent's face was not recognizable due to mummification, and there are no reconstructions available of her. It is believed that Jane Doe had died the same year that she was found. Her unidentified wiki page states that the PMI was weeks to months. The information provided by the website of the ...

Rosa Maria Vasquez was born on August 14, 1952 in Texas. According to one contemporary source, she may have grown up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  By 1973, Rosa, a 20-year-old Latina woman, was living at 834 Bush St in San Francisco, California along with at least one female roommate. She was working as a keypunch operator at the Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco. Rosa was white and Hispanic. According to one source, at the time of her death she was 4'9 and 106 lbs, with brown eyes, medium-length black hair, and pierced ears. It is unknown what she was wearing when she was last seen alive. Rosa was last seen by her roommate, Frances Almazan, when she left their residence on Saturday, May 26, 1973 for the Memorial Day weekend. One source — an SFPD bulletin published in August of that year — indicated that Rosa was last seen alive on May 28th. Photo from the 1975 CA DOJ report. On the morning of Tuesday, May 29, 1973, the nude body of a young woman was f...

On Thursday, April 20, 1978, the body of a recently deceased Hispanic and/or white girl was discovered buried in a shallow grave in a commercial flower field in the 19300 block of South Wilmington Ave in Carson, LA County, CA.  Jane Doe had died recently enough that same year for her face to still be recognizable. Reconstructions of her, including one done by NCMEC, are posted on official databases.  While her COD and DOD are officially undetermined, the Unidentified wiki lists her COD as beating; it is unknown where this information came from, as it is not stated by the LA County Medical Examiner's Office (LACME) on their website.    According to the LA County Sheriff's Department (LASD), at one point two Hispanic males were seen driving away from the site where the body was found in a 1970 dark blue Vega Hatchback. Jane Doe's death is being investigated as a homicide. Reconstruction of Jane Doe from NCMEC. Jane Doe was 14 to 20 years old, 5'1 to 5'3 (estimated)...

At 11:18am on Sunday, March 16, 1980, the decomposed body of a man was located on the dirt shoulder of Avenue 50 between Polk & Tyler St.s in Coachella, Riverside County, CA. He had multiple gunshot wounds, and had been dead for one to two days, putting his death somewhere between March 14th to 15th, 1980. He was fully dressed, but did not have any identification or personal belongings on him. His page on the Riverside County Sheriff's cold case website specifies that, "It is unknown where death occurred," indicating that he had been killed elsewhere before being dumped at the location where he was found. John Doe was a white man with possible Hispanic ancestry who stood 5'9 tall and weighed 160 lbs. While NamUs and Doe Network put his possible age range at 20 to 30 years old, The Desert Sun  and the Riverside County Sheriff's Office (RCSO) puts him at 20 to 25 years old. His estimated age group on NamUs is "Adult - Pre 30." John Doe had light to med...

On Monday, October 2, 1972, a local man was out hunting for chukar — a type of bird — in rural Elko County, Nevada, when he discovered a body in a shallow ditch  — possibly a grave, according to sources  — and covered with dirt and dead willows. The body, with the decapitated head nearby, was found in the area of Deeth, Elko County, NV, approx. 100 yds off of Devil's Gate Road, just north of I-80. View from street of area where Jane Doe was found 100yds from the road. Location pinpointed by me. Screenshot taken from Google Maps Street View.   The unidentified person's torso was not recovered, and the remains were partial skeletal parts only. A 1998 newspaper article indicated that a skull, some rib bones, and a leg bone were found. Only the Doe Network states that the head had been decapitated. One newspaper article implies that animals may have gotten to the remains prior to discovery.  By 1998 the Doe's sex was still undetermined. An anthropologist who was sent the...

At 12:30pm on Friday, February 25, 1977,  a rock collector discovered a badly decomposed body near the Cactus City water pumping station/rest stop, and promptly called authorities. While contemporary newspaper articles state that the area of discovery was located about 20 mi east of Indio, Riverside County, CA, modern sources differ: NamUs states that the body was, "found on a dirt frontage road 19 miles east of Indio." Meanwhile, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Office (RCSO)'s website, the body was found in, "open desert north of [the] I-10 freeway and east of the Cactus City rest stop area, concealed under brush that had been set [on] fire. This area is about 25 miles east of Indio, CA." Investigators were initially unable to determine the sex of the decedent due to the advanced decomposition, though by February 28th — three days after discovery — it was determined that the body was that of a female. All sources differ on the PMI. According to ...