Los Gatos Weekly-Times

BONES REMAIN AT CORONER'S OFFICE UNDER THE NAME OF 'JOHN DOE'

By Shari Kaplan

One year after they were unearthed along the banks of Los Gatos Creek, the bones of a teenage boy remain at the county coroner's office, still going by the name of "John Doe."

A former Santa Cruz mountains family, now living in Missouri who told police last summer that the skeleton might be their son's will not positively identify the remains based solely on the clothing exhumed with him, Los Gatos Police Sgt. Tricia Friedrich said.

The macramé knotwork on the belt, which also bore a Schlitz beer insignia, reminded them of something once worn by their son, whom they reported as missing in the early 1980s, Friedrich said.

Without something more definitive, though, such as the DNA testing police initially hoped to have done, John Doe will reside at the coroner's office indefinitely.

"The investigation has not ceased. At this point in time, we're still waiting for the coroner's office to get a DNA test done," Friedrich said. The testing remains a low priority because of the case's lack of immediacy. Friedrich said the police may go through another agency, but that would also take a long time.

On April 20, 1995, a transient walking along the Los Gatos Creek Trail about a quarter-mile south of E. Main Street pulled at an old belt buckle he saw gleaming in the dirt. He found much more than he bargained for, pulling up the whole belt along with decaying blue jeans and several human leg bones.

Los Gatos police began an investigation immediately, sending members of the Disaster Aid and Response Team to the creek bank, where they dug up an almost complete skeleton with decaying leather work boots. The head and hands were suspiciously missing and have never been located despite thorough searches of the area.

Coroners and forensic anthropologists soon determined the bones were 10 to 12 years old and belonged to a 14- to 17-year-old male, 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing approximately 130 pounds.

The case is labeled a homicide because because the bones were discovered in an aligned position that suggested to police and coroners that the body was placed in an intentional gravesite and buried.