SANTA CRUZ — With the assistance of gene sequencing advances, investigators have recognized a person discovered useless of obvious foul play 41 years in the past in Pure Bridges State Park.
Based on a launch posted to the web site of DNASolves, an arm of Houston-based lab Othram Inc., the “John Doe” unsolved doubtless murder sufferer was 28-year-old Rodney Alan Rumsey, of Woodland.
In 2022, the California Division of Justice, in collaboration with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Workplace, submitted forensic proof to Othram. The corporate’s scientists used the forensic proof to develop a DNA extract and, later, a complete DNA profile for the person. The lab’s in-house forensic genetic family tree group produced new investigative leads that had been despatched again to regulation enforcement, whose investigators decided that Rumsey was born Might 25, 1954. Extra particulars of his life remained sparse, in response to Othram.
Santa Cruz Police Division Lt. Karina Ceceña stated that the unsolved murder had now been moved to “energetic” investigation standing, as a result of sufferer’s identification. She confirmed that the division continued to deal with Rumsey’s loss of life as a potential murder.
The Sheriff’s Workplace, Ceceña stated, had entry to the physique’s DNA proof via its Coroner’s Unit.
“It’s an open case. Clearly, now we now have an ID on the sufferer so we’re type of beginning over now,” Ceceña stated. “We’ll truly interview household and go from there.”
Based on Sentinel stories from 1982 and 1983, a hiker had positioned a “partially mummified” physique on the afternoon of Oct. 6, 1982. The decomposed physique was mendacity facedown in thick brush on the japanese shore of the Moore Creek outlet at Pure Bridge State Seashore. Rumsey, with brown hair and a 2-inch-long beard, was sporting a Levi’s jacket, two pairs of blue denims, a crimson plaid long-sleeved shirt, a darkish crimson vest and a well-worn pair of blue trainers with brown laces.
The physique’s most figuring out traits, investigators stated on the time, had been his two tattoos — one in all a crimson rose with three leaves on his left forearm and the opposite an Indian cranium in black ink with crimson accents on his proper forearm.
Earlier Sentinel stories trace at Rumsey’s lengthy ties to the realm. Within the papers’ courtroom log briefs on Oct. 28, 1973 — 9 years earlier — a Rodney Alan Rumsey, 19, was positioned on two years of formal probation and sentenced to 37 days in jail for joyriding.
Othram’s prices for processing the casework had been offered by the Roads to Justice program, in response to the DNASolves website. The DNASolves database is solely centered on enabling human identification for regulation enforcement investigations.
