CA CA - Montara - Male #UP10639, 7-8, dismembered w/plastic piece in rib cage, Jan'75

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Fuuro

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The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Date Found - January 13, 1975
Location Found - Montara, California

Demographics
Sex: Male
Race / Ethnicity: Uncertain
Possible First Name--
Possible Middle Name --
Possible Last Name --
Possible Nickname --
Estimated Age Group: PreAdolescent
Estimated Age Range: (Years) 7-8
Estimated Year of Death: 1974-1975
Estimated PMI: 2 Months
Height: Cannot Estimate
Weight: Cannot Estimate

Details of Recovery


Inventory of Remains: Head not recovered. One or more limbs not recovered. One or both hands not recovered.
Condition of Remains: Not recognizable - Traumatic injuries

Circumstances of Recovery: Torso with two attached thighs was found nude. An orange plastic piece 1/8" wide was found in the rib cage.

--------------------------------------

NamUS profiles are not as easy to copy as they used to be, so I tried my best to include all of the details I felt were most important.

- A couple of things stood out to me; the plastic piece struck me as extremely odd in particular. I don't have much knowledge of the respiratory system or anatomy in general, but I'm assuming that the child ingested the plastic. It doesn't look like this would have been enough to kill him, seeing as the piece was really small. I don't know how likely it is that the plastic piece was actually much bigger than what was found in the torso. Is it possible that whoever was with this child was able to extract most of the plastic from him? If he choked to death as a result of swallowing the full plastic piece, perhaps a bit broke off and "went down the wrong pipe", and the majority of the plastic remained in his airway, and someone took it out in the process of dismembering and decapitating him (I really did not like typing that).

- What I don't get even more, though, is that they went as far as to dismember the body if this child did die as a result of a freak accident. If this was an accident, maybe whoever got rid of the body had some sort of criminal history that would have discouraged them from reporting the death. I can't think of anything else that fits or that would explain the destruction of the remains. Usually, when children this young are found dead and dismembered, I get an idea that they died as a result of some type of abuse and not accidental or natural causes.

- Also, does anyone have any input regarding the likelihood that 7 to 8 year old child would try to ingest plastic? It's been a minute since I was that age, but I remember being told at 3-4 not to "eat" small objects like marbles and plastic toys because they were a choking hazard, and I (usually) listened.

I forgot to put "Jan'75" in the thread title.
 
Thank you for bringing this case forward, fuuro.

The plastic piece seems tiny - 1/8" is so small. My thought was he got stabbed with something and a piece broke off, which couldn't be recovered at time of death but then due to decomp came back into access.
 
The orange plastic may be unrelated to the crime entirely. I’m thinking it’s some type of debris that ended up in his ribcage and has nothing to do with his cause of death.
 
Is it possible someone tried to suffocate him with plastic and he swallowed a piece trying to dislodge it...Or his remains may have been wrapped in the plastic and only the majority of it was removed...
 
Sue Doe Nimm said:
The orange plastic may be unrelated to the crime entirely. I’m thinking it’s some type of debris that ended up in his ribcage and has nothing to do with his cause of death.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I think that this probably had nothing to do with the plastic piece either.

However, that's literally the only theory I can think of the explain why this might have happened since we have so little information.

Another thing -- a connection between this case and another case involving partial remains of a child has been brought up on these forums in the past:

CA - CA - San Mateo Co., Child Skull UP9597, 5-7, on beach near San Gregorio, Mar'06

It was suggested by a few people that the remains featured in the above thread are actually the remaining parts of this child.

NamUS profile: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

In theory, there are no major differences in the demographics of the two UID cases; they were even located in the same county. However, there are so few details available for each of these cases. Because we have next to no information to begin with, the fact that nothing is glaringly contradictory between the two case files really doesn't mean much, in my opinion. The postmortem interval for the remains discovered in 2006 is "years", but I think it would be a stretch to say that it could be as long as 30+ years. I still think it is definitely worth mentioning.
 
Sorry to double post, but I feel like this is kind of important: according to a post by CarlK90245 on the last thread, another torso and pair of legs were located at the same exact location almost three years after these remains were discovered.

The second person was a male listed as a preadolescent, but the age range given is 10-20.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
 
The recent UID you mentioned stated they extracted DNA....The UID for this thread was found in the mid '70s...That was long before DNA...I wonder if they exhumed the remains to get DNA...

I think you may be on to something... Perhaps some maniac has been preying on children for years...And dismembering the body and disposing of the remains in the ocean is their MO..
 
Fuuro said:
Sorry to double post, but I feel like this is kind of important: according to a post by CarlK90245 on the last thread, another torso and pair of legs were located at the same exact location almost three years after these remains were discovered.

The second person was a male listed as a preadolescent, but the age range given is 10-20.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
Click to expand...

The body found in 1977 was exactly the same, a torso with only thighs.

JOHN DOE / CASE #77-1048 | Coroner

Could also this one be connected somehow. JOHN DOE #75-936 | Coroner
 
Jan 13, 1975 Montara John Doe - Newspapers.com
13 Jan 1975 Montara John Doe - Newspapers.com

Here is some more potentially major news: I found newspaper clippings about this case from when it initially broke 44 years ago. According to the articles, it was initially believed that these remains belonged to an eight-year-old boy named Paulo who was fishing with his father and another man when their boat hit a rock on December 24, 1978. The father, Pablo Tapete, was later found deceased, but the other man survived. They said that the remains would be given to a coroner for identification, but I wasn't able to find anything saying confirming / ruling out the possible match. The fact that there is an active NamUS case many decades later is telling me that this isn't Paulo.

After finding these articles and learning of the other set of dismembered remains found at the exact same address as these, I have to say that this case is way crazier than I expected.

Edit: A third body washed up at the lighthouse in April 1977. This time, the body was believed to belong to a man using the alias of "Scott Ladue". This case is a little different, as this person is believed to have driven their car off of a cliff. I doubt this has anything to do with the others, but I guess it's something?
 
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Goecke said:
JOHN DOE / CASE #77-1048 | Coroner
COD for the John Doe found in 1977 is related to drowning. So the 'dismemberment' could have been disarticulation.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess there isn't any sort of connection between the cases, then.

These cases have thrown me for a loop. Like you, I thought something really messed up was going on here.

It also looks as if I can't read, seeing as I have been on that page several times before.
 
Fuuro said:
Well, I guess there isn't any sort of connection between the cases, then.

These cases have thrown me for a loop. Like you, I thought something really messed up was going on here.
Click to expand...

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I really thought we were onto something, but I guess not. It was still worth looking into.
 
Goecke said:
JOHN DOE / CASE #77-1048 | Coroner
COD for the John Doe found in 1977 is related to drowning. So the 'dismemberment' could have been disarticulation.
Click to expand...

I wish we could see the coroners rapport. I can't read eithers, so it seems...missed the drowning part also. Drowning would mean that this person went into the water alive. Dismembered first in the way the body was found, would make that impossible, for obvious reasons. With disarticulation (no satisfying translation found on the internet, yet) you mean that the water, or smashing against the rocks, could have taken away the missing body parts? BTW this John Doe has a Namus file too
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

"our" John Doe (January 1975) was first to believed being a child fishing with his father and another person who went overboard, his dad found, other person found alive. This makes me think they thought at this time this was a drowning victim too, but no obvious COD is mentioned on the coroners website. Also in this case the dismembering of the body is exactly the same way as the drowned John Doe (December 1977) The only thing different is that John Doe 1975 was nude and had orange plastic in his ribcage (which I don't think is very significant if he was a drowning victim too) and John Doe 1977 had a small amounts of denim around his waist. All clothes could have been washed away by the water when the body started to decompose and pieces started falling off (sorry).

Makes me think, maybe this were both drowning victims and nothing sinister is going on.
 
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Disarticulation of limbs is extremely common in drowning victims and any body that's in moving water, particularly the ocean, for more than a day or so. A body in the ocean will typically float for a bit before sinking, where currents drag the body around on the bottom and through debris, which very often disarticulates limbs. There's also sometimes scavenger activity. Eventually the body starts to decompose more and float, which often leads to the discovery of partial remains like these days to weeks or even much longer after the person died.

This is the same type of phenomenon that's believed to be behind the discovery of many disarticulated feet in shoes over the years on the PNW. Shoes (particularly athletic shoes and boots, which is what these feet are found in) are pretty durable and good at keeping a foot in tact and in relatively good shape after it's been disarticulated in the water. The Pacific coast can get awfully rough, there are many missing people assumed to be lost at sea there, and the rockiness of the coastline probably contributes to disarticulation.
 
This also reminded me of the shoes in the PNW. At first it seems sinister with how similar the bodies (or body parts) were found, but after looking into it more it all seems like a weird coincidence.

I don't think the piece of plastic is significant either. He could have swallowed it on accident, or it could have been a piece of debris that found its way into his body after death.
 
Well, the Point Montara Lighthouse seems to be kind of cursed, because yet another still-unidentified person was found near it in the water in April of '77. That male was an adult, and it appeared as if he had died in a single-person drunk driving accident where he'd driven his van over a cliff. That makes three people who somehow ended up there within a period of three years, all of which are still unidentified ~45 years later. I think this might have something to do with the current of the ocean taking bodies from various locations in the water and dumping them on these particular shores.

I am thinking of starting a thread for the April '77 doe, as there actually is at least some information about the circumstances of his case (and possibly, his life) online.
 
Last edited:
Fuuro said:
Well, the Point Montara Lighthouse seems to be kind of cursed, because yet another still-unidentified person was found near it in the water in April of '77. This man was an adult, and it appeared as if he had died in a single-person drunk driving accident where he'd driven his van over a cliff. That makes three people who somehow ended up there within a period of three years, all of which are still unidentified ~45 years later. I think this might have something to do with the current of the ocean taking bodies from various locations in the water and dumping them on these particular shores.

I am thinking of starting a thread for the April '77 doe, as there actually is at least some information about the circumstances of his case (and his life) online.
Click to expand...

This definitely happens with currents, often where two or more longshore currents converge. If you've ever seen a stretch of beach that seems especially "trashy" or covered in seaweed compared to other sections, it's probably convergent currents.
 

JOHN DOE / CASE #77-1048

December 18, 1977, a hiker found what appeared to be a human on the rocky area at Point Montara Light House in Montara. The decedent appeared to be a young male of possible European ancestry with remnants of blue denim material around the waist area. The remains were comprised of a decomposed...
www.smcgov.org www.smcgov.org
 
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