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After more than three decades, investigators identified a woman found stabbed to death in the Arizona desert in 1989 and located her two infant daughters who vanished at the time of her death.
Marina Ramos, of Bakersfield, California, was found naked with multiple stab wounds Dec. 12, 1989 in Mohave County, Arizona, about 50 miles south of Las Vegas.
While detectives determined she was killed at that location, they were unable to identify her because Ramos’ DNA did not yield any matches.
In February 2022, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit resubmitted fingerprints from the case file to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and the FBI matched the prints to “Maria Ortiz,” an alias used by Ramos, who had been arrested for shoplifting in Bakersfield in 1989.
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Family members later confirmed Ramos disappeared that same year and was last seen with daughters Elizabeth, then 14 months old, and Jasmin, then 2 months old.
For more than two years, the sheriff’s office put out press releases, posted on social media, reviewed broadcast television reports and tested Ramos’ family members’ DNA to find out what happened to the two girls.
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In August, investigators found the two daughters through a DNA match and learned they were abandoned in a park restroom in Oxnard, California, in December 1989, just two days after their mother’s body was found in Arizona.
According to police reports, a passerby heard children crying in the women’s restroom and found the girls lying on the wet floor without any adults nearby.
The girls were placed in foster care and “stayed there for a significant amount of time” before being adopted by a family in Ventura County, where they were raised together, according to authorities.
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“While we are excited to announce that one part of this 36-year-old mystery has been solved, the search for the suspects involved in the homicide of Marina Ramos continues,” sheriff’s office officials wrote in a statement.
A witness in the area told officers she saw a Hispanic woman and two Hispanic men with the two girls at the park.
The woman was carrying the younger child in a yellow blanket, and one of the men was carrying the older child, according to the witness. They were seen traveling in a black pickup.
Anyone with information about the investigation is asked to contact the sheriff’s office.
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