Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

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 Linda Rosa, Rosalinda, or Rosalind; I am using the most common version I could find, which was also used in the TX birth index on Ancestry. 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). Rosa Linda graduated from Watsonville High School in June 1971. By July of that year she was taking classes at Cabrillo College, a community college in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, while also working as...

Deana and an older girl, Tonna, were adopted from an orphanage in Hong Kong by their (white) foster father Dean Hooper in 1966; because of this, Deana and Tonna regarded each other as sisters. Deana, her adoptive parents, her older sister, and a brother lived together in Sonoma. Eventually her sister became married and moved to Vallejo, Solano County, CA. Deana lived in Yountville at the time with her family. Photo from the March 13, 1975 edition of the  Vallejo Times-Herald . Edited by me for clarity.   At the time of her death, Deana, 18, was staying with her older sister, Mrs Tonna Albright, who lived at 901 Georgia St in Vallejo. According to the missing person's report filed by Tonna on July 15, 1974, on Monday, July 11th, she and Deana had attended a party at the Enlisted Men's Club on Mare Island, and when it came time to go home, Tonna couldn't find Deana. That was the last time she was seen. When Deana did not return home following the party, Tonna called their fat...

In early 1969 12-year-old Deborah Lee "Debbie" Shelton was living in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, CA with her mother Marcia, 28, and sisters Victoria, 11, and Melissa, 6. They had moved to the Rio del Mar area of the county from Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, CA about a year earlier. Her father, James Vern Shelton, was killed in a car accident at the age of 28 in 1966. Aptos is an unincorporated town in Santa Cruz County, CA. According to Wikipedia, it consists of several different small villages, including Rio del Mar, where Debbie's family lived, and nearby Aptos Village. The villages that comprise Aptos presently have a combined population of 24,402, with Rio del Mar itself consisting of 9,128 of that number. Debbie was born on July 25, 1956. She  reportedly visited her paternal grandparents in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, CA often, and had made several friends her age in the Santa Rosa area. Debbie was a seventh grader at Aptos Junior High who was on winter break at the...

Marina Habe was born on February 23, 1951 in Germany to writer Hans Habe and actress Eloise Hardt. She graduated from University High School in West LA in June 1968, and at the time of her death she was attending the University of Hawaii and was home for the Christmas holidays. Marina's parents were divorced at the time, and her mother Eloise had reportedly remarried. Her father Hans lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Marina was 5'3 and 113 lbs, with blue eyes and black hair. Marina was described by friends as "very quiet," and was planning on becoming an artist. Marina Habe. Photo from FindAGrave. At about 4:30pm on Sunday, December 29, 1968, 17-year-old Marina left the home she shared with her mother to meet with her date, John Hornburg, 22, at his family's house at 13326 Sunset Blvd in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Hornburgs were close friends of Marina's family at the time. The pair later left Hornburg's home, and at about 8:30pm they met w...

On Friday, March 23, 1973, a black labrador retriever brought the skeletal remains of an unidentified female into the residential yard of the house trailer of his owner, Donald Parsons, 28, in an isolated desert area about a mile south of White and Phelan Roads in Phelan, San Bernardino County, CA. Parsons, believing the bones were those of a Wild West prospector or from an old Native American burial, originally gave the bones to a neighbor's granddaughter, an Ontario, CA high school student who planned to show the bones to her anthropology class. However, Parsons had second thoughts and called authorities, who picked up the bones on Monday, April 9, 1973. Investigation swiftly confirmed that the unidentified person had in fact died recently. Despite being described as skeletal, NamUs also states the condition of the remains were "partial remains with soft tissues." Parsons's dog originally found a skull, jaw bone, and leg bone. Further search by authorities on horseb...