She was buried as a Jane Doe in 1989. Now, her missing daughters have been found alive – and the search for her killer begins
For more than three decades, Marina Ramos was known only as Jane Doe.
In 1989, the 28-year-old mother was found stabbed to death, her naked body discarded in the Arizona desert. With no name and no family to claim her, she was buried without identity.
Years passed with no new leads or answers in the case. Then, in February 2022, a breakthrough when investigators were able to uncover her identity using updated fingerprint technology.
But they were met with a shocking twist. Marina had two baby girls – 14-month-old Elizabeth and 2-month-old Jasmin – who went missing days after she was murdered.
And they were still alive.
Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Lori Miller, who never gave up on the case, began her search for the girls, never wavering on her belief that she would find them.
“I always believed they were alive,” Miller said.
“And to finally find them… it’s hard to describe the feeling. It’s relief. It’s joy. But there’s still a shadow over everything because their mother’s killer is out there.”
On December 12, 1989, Marina Ramos’ body was found on Old Temple Bar Road in Mohave County, about 50 miles south of Las Vegas.
Before she was buried, detectives were able to obtain a DNA profile, which was entered into CODIS, the FBI database.
In February 2022, Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit resubmitted fingerprints from the case file to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. They got a hit.
The prints matched a “Maria Ortiz” in Bakersfield, California. An investigation revealed that the woman had been arrested for shoplifting in June 1989.
A records check with the Kern County Sheriff’s Office and the Bakersfield Police Department showed that Ortiz had listed an address in Bakersfield along with the name of two friends.
When investigators contacted the friends of the woman, one of them said they did not know anyone by the name of Maria Ortiz — but that she had a cousin, Marina Ramos, who had been missing since 1989.
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