CA CA - Donald Ewalt, 22, El Centro, 4 Oct 1979

Ambercat · May 30, 2011

Donald Cary Ewalt

Missing since September 1979 from El Centro, Imperial County, California
Classification: Endangered Missing

Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: September 30, 1957
Age at Time of Disappearance: 22 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'9"; 120 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White male. Black hair; hazel eyes.
Dentals: Not available.

Circumstances of Disappearance

Donald Ewalt was last seen in September of 1979, after work with three male individuals. Foul play is possible.

The California Department of Justice lists him as a voluntary missing adult (I am not really sure of their reasons).

The El Centro Police Department and Texas Department of Public Safety are the investigating agencies. I think Donald Ewalt may have gone to high school in either San Antonio, El Paso, or Odessa, Texas.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/3445dmca.html

Ambercat · Jun 1, 2011

I noticed an unidentified person who was discovered on March 16, 1980 in Coachella, Riverside County, California
http://www.doenetwork.org/hot/hotcase1283.html
http://www.riversidesheriff.org/coroner/unidentified/1980-4518.asp
https://identifyus.org/cases/7201

According to the Riverside County Coroner:

Numerous attempts to identify him by his fingerprints and missing person listings have not been successful.

No rule outs were listed on the NamUS site, so I e-mailed Riverside County to ask who the rule outs were (expecting to hear that Donald Cary Ewalt was on the list of rule outs). I was a little surprised by the response I received from Rick Bogan, an investigator with the Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner:

This particular case has been around a long time and we have looked closely at a couple of missing persons but they were never ruled out because they did not have dental or prints and we did not have DNA on our unidentified.

I have sent his fingerprints off to various local, state, and federal fingerprint databases and never received a match. We never did have anyone to eliminate by prints.

One of the missing persons were are looking at is Donald Ewalt from El Central, CA., in September of 1979. He is the right height and has a mustache and goatee but his hair is black and our unidentified was brown. Ewalt had been missing six months when our unidentified was found and had dead only a couple of days. We are still waiting to dig our unidentified up to compare DNA with Ewalt.

Ambercat · Feb 26, 2012

This is a link to Donald Cary Ewalt's Charley Project page -- http://charleyproject.org/cases/e/ewalt_donald.html

He is still not listed in NamUs

Ambercat · Sep 26, 2012

It's been 33 years this month since Donald Ewalt went missing. Hopefully, he will be found soon.

Ambercat · Dec 16, 2014

Donald Ewalt is now in NamUs -- https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/14858/161

I'm not sure if Riverside County was ever able to exhume John "Indescribably Delicious" Doe, but his NamUs page https://identifyus.org/cases/7201 still does not list any rule outs.

Another unidentified young man was recently added to NamUs from Imperial County (the county Donald Ewalt was missing from) -- https://identifyus.org/en/cases/13181. The circumstances of the UID are described as --

In 1985 a human skull was found in the area of Brawley, California. This cranium was turned over to the Imperial County Sheriff's Office in 2005. A prior study of the cranium showed that the cranium belonged to a male subject of white or hispanic decendeacy in his >18s.

Per Yahoo Maps, Brawley is about 14 miles from El Centro, the city Donald was last seen. Also, NamUs UP #13181 is believed to have died between 1979 and 1984.

I believe that Donald Ewalt has been submitted as possibility for an UID in Sacramento and Florida by other Websleuths members; if anyone has heard back?

Nancy Drew RN · Oct 21, 2019

Donald Ewalt is now listed as an exclusion to the first John Doe listed in the previous post. The second still does not have any exclusions, although Ewalt on the whole has been excluded as 37 different UIDs.

Updated Charley link: Donald Cary Ewalt – The Charley Project
3445DMCA - Donald Cary Ewalt

CastlesBurning · Jan 10, 2022

Bumping for Donald, missing over 42 years...

Beccalicious · Oct 1, 2023

Bumping

CA CA - Donald Ewalt, 22, El Centro, 4 Oct 1979

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