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...

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...

Winnefred Jeanette Freeman, 20, was last seen on Wednesday, May 8, 1968 in Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon. She was seen getting into her car with a middle-aged, heavy-set man who has not been identified. Her car was a 1964 blue & white Chevrolet. Four days later, on Sunday, May 12, 1968, Winnefred's car was found abandoned in the city. Very few details are available in her disappearance. It is unknown if/when Winnefred was originally reported missing. On September 27, 1968, her parents — Mr and Mrs Isaac Harpole — published a $300 reward — $2,756.93 today — in  The Oregonian  for anyone with information concerning Winnefred or her possible abductor; informants were asked to notify the missing persons department of the Portland Police Bureau. At the time of her disappearance, Winnefred was 20 years old, 5'4, and 115 to 120 lbs. She is a Black female with black hair and brown eyes. It is unknown what she was wearing when she was last seen. 1965 Jefferson High S...

Very little is definitively known about Pem Michelle Yates-Briggs's disappearance. She was born on March 31, 1963 in Norfolk, VA. Her mother's birth name is Barbara Cecile Briggs, though she seems to have changed her name to Bo Monique Bradley some time after Pem's disappearance. According to Pem's half-sister, the man listed as Pem's father on her birth certificate was J Yates; however, this is supposedly not Pem's actual birth father.  Photo from NamUs. At some point after Pem's birth, she and her mother moved to Oregon c.1971, and Barbara remarried to a man named Denman Wehrli Sr. Pem has two half-siblings from this marriage, born in 1972 and 1974, respectively: Dewana Wehrli (sister) and Denman E Wehrli Jr. (brother). According to Dewana, she (Dewana) was the product of rape by an unknown person during Barbara's marriage to Denman Sr. Pem may have used the surnames Yates, Briggs, Yates-Briggs, or Wehrli.  The family seems to have lived in White Salmo...