In 1989, the naked body of a woman was found in the Arizona desert. When detectives finally figured out who she was, they discovered she had two baby girls.
On December 12, 1989, a misguided tourist stumbled upon the naked, bloody body of a woman in the vast, lonely Arizona desert about 80 miles south of Las Vegas.
Two days later, nearly 400 miles to the west in the working-class coastal California town of Oxnard, good Samaritans found the two baby girls crying on the dirty floor of a park bathroom.
At the time, detectives in each jurisdiction did not believe the incidents were related. Investigators in Arizona had no idea who Jane Doe was, and authorities in California had no idea who the baby was.
Each incident remained a mystery for decades. Until this year.
Arizona cold case detectives were not only able to identify Jane Doe as a 28-year-old California woman named Marina Ramos, but they later made the shocking discovery that the baby girl left on the bathroom floor was Ramos’ daughter. With the help of family DNA and dogged determination, the detective recently tracked down the girls in circumstances she calls a “miracle.”
As the girls, now in their 30s, come to terms with who their mother is and the fact that she was murdered, the hunt for the killer begins.
cold case reopened
In 2019, Detective Lori Miller had just joined the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office in northwestern Arizona to work on its newly formed cold case unit.
One of Miller’s first cases was the discovery of Jane Doe’s body in the desert on December 12, 1989. The woman’s throat was slit, semen was found on her naked body, and the amount of blood at the scene made it clear that she had been murdered in a remote location.
“No human being deserves to be killed, but it’s inhumane to do it in a way that lacks dignity,” Miller told USA TODAY.
Fortunately, four Ohio women who came across the body while exploring the ghost town found Jane Doe about eight hours after the murder, Miller said. This allowed detectives to collect fingerprints and the man’s DNA.
However, the case languished for decades until Miller began investigating. In 2022, Miller resubmitted Jane Doe’s fingerprints to the FBI. The next day, Miller received identifying information.
The fingerprints were identified as belonging to a woman named Maria Ortiz of Bakersfield, California. With the help of Bakersfield police, Miller tracked the person described as Ortiz’s “friend” to Tennessee. Miller called her.
“She said, ‘I don’t know anyone named Maria Ortiz, but my cousin Marina Ramos has been missing since 1989,'” Miller said, adding that the woman had even crazier news. Ramos had two young daughters, but no one in his family had seen them since 1989.
“We’re currently working on an unsolved murder and missing person investigation,” Miller said.
Search for Maria Ramos’ missing baby
When Ms. Miller learned that Jane Doe was Marina Ramos and that Ramos was the mother of two baby girls, tracking down her missing daughter became her top priority. None of her fellow detectives thought they were likely to be alive.
“People told me to give up, saying, ‘You’ll never find it,'” Miller recalled. “But this was my Moby Dick. I never stopped working on it.”
Armed with Marina Ramos’ identity, Miller was able to track down the sisters and daughter. The daughter is five years older than Ramos’ missing daughters and was being raised by her grandmother.
Miller was able to get her daughter’s DNA tested. After weeks of multiple tests with different companies, DNA ultimately turned out to be a big hit. It turns out to be the half-sister of one of the missing babies.
“My heart stopped,” Miller said. “I thought, ‘Sacred cow.'”
Missing daughters given new names and adopted
After Miller’s family DNA was determined, she called each of her sisters to tell them the news. Their mother, a woman named Marina Ramos, was killed in the desert.
It was a shocking event for the sisters.
When they were found on the bathroom floor in 1989, police contacted local news media to spread the word in hopes of identifying the family. No one came forward, so a local family adopted the sisters, named them Tina and Melissa, and gave them a loving home.
When the girls were teenagers, their parents told them they had been abandoned and adopted. They believed that their biological mother did not want them and that it was her who had abandoned them.
“I told them, ‘No,’ she was a murder victim two days ago,” Miller said. “It helped give them some comfort.”
Miller also shared their birth names, Jasmine and Elizabeth Ramos.
It happened in late August, about three years after Miller first identified Marina Ramos and began searching for the girls. Now the girls are planning a reunion with their long-lost biological family, including their aunt Margarita, Marina’s sister.
Miller recalled Margarita’s reaction when she learned that the nieces she had wondered about for 36 years were alive and well.
“She was like, ‘Okay, this is a miracle. We found the girls. Now, who killed my sister?'” Miller said. “She said, ‘What kind of animal would do that to her?’
A murder investigation has few clues, many hurdles, and one determined detective.
Miller faces an uphill battle in investigating the murder of Marina Ramos.
She said little evidence was collected from the scene and no murder weapon was found. Ramos’ semen was not sufficient to conduct a forensic genetic genealogy investigation. The semen has been registered with the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), but so far no hits have been found regarding the suspect.
Marina Ramos, who was last seen alive by a cousin Miller tracked down in Tennessee, died of cancer last year.
She told the Mirror that the last time she saw her cousin, Ramos had just been released from Bakersfield prison for shoplifting, showed up with a man named Fernando to pick up his daughters, and moved to Ontario, outside Los Angeles, “in search of a better life.”
One clue comes from the toilet scene where the girls are abandoned.
Witnesses reported seeing two Hispanic men and a Hispanic woman get out of a black pickup truck with the girls inside and then leave without the girls inside. The woman is also described as being approximately 5 feet tall and wearing a red skirt and white boots. (This happened after Ramos was murdered, so she cannot be that woman.)
“I know it’s an unexpected story, but if someone still alive remembers the woman in the red skirt and white boots at Colonia Park in Oxnard, it might help us continue to follow up on leads,” Miller said.
Anyone with information that can help solve this case is asked to call the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office at 928-753-0753, extension 4408.
“We got the girls, but now we need justice for Marina,” Miller said. “We need to find out who did this horrible thing to her.”
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
