Cold Case Breakthrough: Identifying Marina Ramos and Finding Her Lost Daughters
After 36 years of mystery, investigators have finally identified a woman found murdered in the Arizona desert and located her two infant daughters who disappeared when their mother was killed. This remarkable breakthrough brings partial closure to a decades-old cold case that haunted law enforcement and left a family searching for answers.
In December 1989, the body of a woman was discovered in a remote area of Mohave County, Arizona, about 50 miles south of Las Vegas. She had been stabbed multiple times and left naked in the desert. For more than three decades, she remained nameless – just another Jane Doe in a case file that grew cold. Despite determining she had been killed at that location, investigators couldn’t identify her because her DNA yielded no matches in any database. The case languished for years, becoming one of thousands of unsolved murders across the American Southwest. However, in February 2022, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit decided to take a fresh look at the case, resubmitting the victim’s fingerprints to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. This decision would finally put a name to the victim and set in motion an investigation that would reunite a family torn apart by violence.
The fingerprint submission yielded a match to “Maria Ortiz,” which turned out to be an alias used by Marina Ramos of Bakersfield, California, who had been arrested for shoplifting earlier in 1989. When investigators contacted Ramos’ family members, they confirmed what had long been suspected – Marina had disappeared that same year and was last seen with her two young daughters: 14-month-old Elizabeth and 2-month-old Jasmin. The discovery of Marina’s identity opened a new mystery: what had happened to her baby girls? Had they suffered the same fate as their mother, or were they still alive somewhere? For more than two years following the identification, the sheriff’s office launched an extensive public campaign to locate the missing children, issuing press releases, posting on social media, reviewing old television reports, and testing DNA from Ramos’ family members. It was a painstaking process that required patience and persistence, but investigators refused to give up on finding answers for a family that had been waiting more than three decades.
In August 2024, their efforts were rewarded with a stunning breakthrough. Through DNA matching, investigators located Elizabeth and Jasmin – now grown women in their 30s – and uncovered their remarkable story of survival. According to police reports, just two days after their mother’s body was found in Arizona, the sisters had been abandoned in a park restroom in Oxnard, California, nearly 400 miles away. A passerby heard children crying in the women’s restroom and discovered the girls lying on the wet floor with no adults in sight – Elizabeth, then a toddler, and Jasmin, still a tiny infant. The girls were immediately placed in foster care, where they remained “for a significant amount of time” before being adopted together by a family in Ventura County, California. Though separated from their birth family by violence and circumstance, the sisters had at least been raised together, unaware of their tragic beginnings or their mother’s unsolved murder.
The circumstances surrounding how the girls ended up in that Oxnard restroom may provide crucial clues to solving Marina’s murder. A witness reported seeing a Hispanic woman and two Hispanic men with the children at the park just before they were abandoned. According to this witness, the woman was carrying the younger child wrapped in a yellow blanket, while one of the men carried the older girl. The group was traveling in a black pickup truck. These details, preserved in police reports from 1989, could potentially lead investigators to those responsible for Marina’s death and the abandonment of her daughters. While the sheriff’s office has not revealed whether the daughters have been reunited with their biological family, the identification provides closure to relatives who have wondered about their fate for decades.
“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,” the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office stated. This case highlights both the advances in forensic technology and the dedication of investigators who refuse to let cold cases remain unsolved. The fingerprint match that identified Marina Ramos as the victim would not have been possible in 1989, when database systems were far more limited. Similarly, the DNA matching that located her daughters demonstrates how modern genetic genealogy has revolutionized cold case investigations. For the investigators who have worked this case across generations, finding Marina’s daughters alive represents a rare bright spot in an otherwise tragic story – proof that persistence and technological advancement can sometimes deliver answers and even miracles decades after a crime.
The investigation into Marina Ramos’ murder remains active, with authorities urging anyone with information to contact the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office. As for Elizabeth and Jasmin, now women in their 30s, they face the challenge of reconciling their established lives with the sudden revelation of their true origins and the violent loss of a mother they never knew. Their story stands as a testament to human resilience and the enduring hope that even the coldest cases can eventually yield answers. The mystery of what happened to Marina Ramos and her daughters on that December day in 1989 may not be fully resolved, but after 36 years, significant pieces of the puzzle have finally fallen into place, bringing a measure of peace to those who have waited so long for answers.
