Tragedies happen in threes. On Dec. 12, 1989, a dead woman was found in a small town, bloodied and stripped, by a couple of lost tourists 50 miles outside Las Vegas. Two days later, two baby girls were found 400 miles west in the California city of Oxnard, crying alone in a dirty park restroom. The crime and mystery remained unsolved for 36 years.
In 2019, Detective Lori Miller joined the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona, and everything changed. In a show of just how much difference one individual can make — especially in Arizona’s recent history of unresolved issues — Detective Miller decided that this one cold case wouldn’t just be her own personal white whale.
When Miller picked up the murder case, the jurisdictions where the missing baby girls were found and where the dead body was discovered didn’t even know their stories were connected. Detective Miller was simply trying to solve her Jane Doe murder mystery.
The woman’s body had a slit throat, semen was found on her, and because of the amount of blood at the scene, police determined she had been killed elsewhere and transported to where she was ultimately found. Normally, the chances of getting justice after a body has been relocated are slim, but luckily, the tourists found her just eight hours later. That allowed police to gather fingerprints and male DNA from the scene. The DNA wasn’t enough to identify a suspect — an aspect that often cracks cold cases wide open — but the fingerprints turned out to be the key that helped Miller get some answers.
In 2022, Miller ran the fingerprints one more time before considering other options. Shockingly, she got a hit. The fingerprints belonged to Maria Ortiz, a woman from Bakersfield, California. Through that lead, Miller tracked down a “friend” who was living in Tennessee at the time.
It turned out that the friend was actually a cousin — and that Maria Ortiz was, in fact, Marina Ramos. Not only had Ramos gone missing in 1989, but she also had two daughters who hadn’t been seen since. This revelation completely blew the case wide open for Detective Miller, who suddenly had more questions than she’d started with.
At that point, Miller shifted her focus to searching for the two missing daughters. She managed to locate Ramos’ mother and another daughter who had since been living together after Ramos disappeared. Using the daughter’s DNA, Miller ran a match — and discovered that the missing girls were already in the police database. The samples matched and found out their birth names were Jasmine and Elizabeth Ramos. According to USA Today, Miller immediately reached out to the two — 36 years after they were found in that dirty restroom.
The news was reportedly a bombshell for the sisters. They had grown up believing their mother had abandoned them because she didn’t want them. The truth, as it finally came out, gave them long-awaited closure. They are reportedly the latest family planning a reunion.
As for Detective Miller, she’s still chasing Ramos’ killer. A new lead came from Ramos’ sister, who passed away last year. She revealed that a man named Fernando was the last person seen with Ramos — the two were reportedly planning to relocate to Los Angeles for better opportunities.
