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...

UPDATE: On April 3, 2026  it was announced that Jane Doe has been identified as Victoria Jean Hargrove.  For more details, a full update can be found here . This post was originally published on Aug. 18, 2025. Aside from this update (in bold), I have not edited the contents in any way since Feb. 16, 2026. This post will remain standing as it is, containing all information about the victim prior to her identification that was known as of Feb. 16, 2026. Furthermore, due  to her identification, some of the links may no longer work or have since been edited to reflect the recent developments. At about 11:00am on Monday, February 18, 1980, three tourists from Canada stopped at a mountain viewpoint on Highway 74 about four to six miles south of Palm Desert, Riverside County, CA. As the tourists peered over a guardrail, they spotted a body either at the bottom of a 20 to 30 ft gully, or about 35 ft down a ravine near a turn-out in the highway. The body was determined to be that ...

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 ...

At about 12:05am on Saturday, July 5, 1969, Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22, and Michael Renault Mageau, 19, parked at the parking lot of secluded Blue Rock Springs Park on the eastern outskirts of Vallejo, Solano County, CA — a popular area for couples — to talk. Darlene parked 70 ft from the lot entrance. Soon, another car parked about 80 ft to her left. The driver turned the headlights off and sat motionless at the steering wheel before leaving the parking lot at a high speed. Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin. Five minutes later, the other driver returned and parked a few feet next to Darlene's vehicle at the passenger side. He exited his car and shined a flashlight into Darlene's car; the couple assumed he was a police officer and rolled down the passenger side window. The man wordlessly fired a gun into the car. One bullet hit Michael in the right arm, and the other Darlene in the neck, causing her to slump towards the steering wheel and become motionless. After five shots w...

Sixteen-year-old Christopher Wells was last seen in December 1972 in Seattle, King County, Washington. Sources differ as to when he went missing: the date provided by NamUs — as well as the Charley Project and the Doe Network, which use NamUs as a source — is Saturday, December 16, 1972, while, according to NCMEC and the Washington Missing Persons Database, Christopher was instead last seen three days earlier, on Wednesday, December 13, 1972. Photo of Christopher c.1972 from NamUs. According to NamUs, Christopher was reported missing on Saturday, December 16, 1972: this is either the day he was last seen, or three days after, depending on the source. The most likely explanation is that Christopher was last seen on Wednesday the 13th before being reported missing on the 16th, and that the reported date was mistakenly entered as the missing date on NamUs, then taken as fact by the Charley Project and the Doe Network. Along with the discrepancies regarding the date, there are very few det...

Yvonne J. Quilantang was born on July 11, 1957 in San Francisco to parents Terezo Vincent Quilantang and Evelyn Marie Quilantang (nee Leroy). Yvonne and her siblings were biracial, half white, half Asian: their father, Terezo, was an immigrant from the Philippines. Some sources from the 1970s mistakenly list Yvonne as Black. However, thorough research on Ancestry indicates that she was not Black, but instead Filipina. Yvonne was the youngest of six children: her older siblings are Sharon, Vincente, Michael, Linda, and Thomas; the latter was only two years older than her. Yvonne and her siblings were baptized Catholic. Yvonne's father was a seaman, and was therefore often away from home. Her mother eventually grew unable to care for her, so Yvonne was "taken into a foster home, where she had lived almost since she could remember." She seemed to still be in contact with her birth family. From the June 24, 1973 edition of the  San Francisco Examiner   In early June 1973, Yvo...

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...

In the early afternoon of Saturday, May 22, 1971, three youths were out hiking in a rugged area when they discovered partial human skeletal remains in a ravine at the base of a 300 ft cliff at/south of the 18900 block of Braemore Rd in an isolated area of Porter Ranch in Northridge. The location of the body is also described as being in/near the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. One or more of the decedent's limbs were not recovered. Neither the COD nor an estimated DOD/PMI could be determined. However, one contemporary newspaper article stated that Jane Doe was, "believed to have been dead at least three months," placing date of death at approx. February 1971 or earlier. A fire had passed through the area in September 1970, and there had been heavy rains as well as an earthquake since that time. Because of this, the skeletal remains — which were determined to be those of a female — may have moved from their original location as a result of these natural events, ...

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