CA CA - Long Beach, WhtMale UP4240, 16-26, buried on beach, Apr'84

Ambercat

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Unidentified White Male

The Doe Network Hot Case Number 1877
NamUs UP Case Number: 4240
Los Angeles County Coroner Case Number: 84-5079
NCIC Number U-160004377

The victim was discovered on April 18, 1984 in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California
Skeletal Remains
He was estimated to have died in 1983 or 1984

Estimated age: 16-26 years old
His height was estimated to be about 5 ft. 11 inches. He had short straight brown hair (about 2”long). His eye color is unknown.
He was wearing corduroy brown and tan pants (pants inseam 29 inches), a short sleeve beige v-neck knit shirt with collar, a black belt (with a 34 inch circumference), and brown NBA tennis shoes (size 9).
His dentals are available. His DNA is being tested, yet the tests are not complete.

The location where he was found was behind 800 Ocean Blvd (Villa Rivera Building) in Long Beach, near 1st Place and Alamitos. He was found by a construction crew doing work in the area.
https://identifyus.org/cases/4240
www.doenetwork.org/hot/hotcase1877.html
 
I e-mailed Daniel Machian of the LA County Coroner and asked if he could have died before May 1983 (serial killer Randy Kraft who lived in Long Beach was arrested on May 14, 1983). He responded:
The estimated time since death was listed as less than one year, it possibly could have been before May1983.
 
Before about 1989 (?), next door to 800 Ocean Blvd was the Pacific Coast Club. On the other side (across Alamitos Blvd) is the International Tower (many more condos). I'm really surprised that no one saw anything.

This is the Villa Rivera building's website http://villariviera.net/
 
This is probably just a coincidence because Tom Starkel disappeared from Palmdale, CA in 1979 and he had blond hair not brown, but his clothing he was last known to be wearing were very similar to Villa Rivera John Doe. Maybe this was just the fashion of the late 1970s/early 1980s.

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/1165/18/
 
This is a photo I took recently of the beach area where this unidentified man was found (in front of the building with the green roof (Villa Rivera)). The tan building with the red roof was built later in about 1990. In 1984, the building next door to the Villa Rivera was the Pacific Coast Club (a brown building that looked sort of like a castle). I am surprised that someone could bury a body in this area of the beach without anyone noticing.
 
This is the photo of the area that I was talking about in the above post. The hosting site that it used to be on (Webshots) closed -- villariverawater.jpg

I was able to locate three small articles about this UID from the Long Beach Press Telegram that provide some background about how the body was found. This one appeared on April 19, 1984 -- lbpt_april191984.jpg

April 20, 1984 -- lbpt_april201984.jpg

April 21, 1984 -- lbpt_april211984.jpg

I was hoping to locate a sketch of the unidentified decedent, yet have not been able to so far.
 
The description of the shoes bugs me: "BR0 NBA TENNIS SH0ES SIZE 9" (from Namus). One of the newspaper articles even calls them "running shoes".

Are they NBA shoes, i.e. basketball shoes? or are they tennis shoes? Real tennis shoes would be white, which leads me to think they're using "tennis shoes" generically, which in turn leads me to believe they're not hightops. Were they leather, nylon, vinyl? Do they have an NBA logo on them, or are they just NBA-style? What brand were they? (NBA is not a brand, as far as I know.) In 1983, there were NBA players who preferred lowtops, so that still fits.

Poking at vintage shoe and sports sites, it looks like the two most likely brands to have brown basketball-type shoes would be Adidas and Puma, which I think were at pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of cost and appeal. Nike and Adidas were newcomers at that point. The traditional American brands (Converse, Puma, the Brown Company brands) were still strong.
 

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