LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Found abandoned and crying in a park restroom in 1989, two sisters now know the names they were given at birth by a mother they probably don’t remember.

A homicide investigation that went nowhere for 33 years took a giant step forward in February 2022 when forensic investigators were able to collect fingerprints in the effort to identify a woman who was found stabbed to death in the desert about 50 miles south of Las Vegas. That added to DNA evidence collected in 1989, and the victim was identified as Marina Ramos.

Investigators continued to pursue leads after a relative revealed the dead woman had a 2-month-old daughter and a 14-month-old daughter when she disappeared.

The story of Ramos and her daughters Jasmin and Elizabeth is still unfolding, and the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said last week that two women have been identified as Ramos’s daughters. DNA matches confirmed their identities.

Details of the case show that the two girls were found about 400 miles away from the site where their mother’s body was found. They were on a wet restroom floor in Oxnard, California, on Dec. 14, 1989. It was two days after their mother was found on Old Temple Bar Road off White Hills Road in Mohave County.

According to investigators, a witness walking in the area heard children crying in the women’s restroom, and he asked a woman to check the bathroom. She found the girls on the floor with no adult nearby. The children were taken to the police station and later placed in the custody of Child Protective Services.

After that, the girls were placed into foster care and stayed there for “a significant amount of time.” The girls were eventually adopted by a couple in Ventura County and were raised together.

Few details were released about the grown sisters. One lives in Tennessee. They kept newspaper clippings and photos from the Oxnard Press-Courier. An article about the case was posted on MissingKids.org.

8 News Now has followed the case, posting stories about Marina Ramos’s identification in 2023 and a story containing “age-processed” images of the girls last month.

Updates on the case have come through the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit.

Investigators did not say how they were able to connect the two women to the case. It’s possible that they saw media reports about the effort to find the daughters.

“While we are excited to announce that one part of this 36-year-old mystery has been solved, the search for the suspects involved in the homicide of Marina Ramos continues,” according to the sheriff’s office.

“A witness in the area told officers that she had observed a woman and two men with the children at the park. They were observed driving a black mini pickup. The witness saw the woman carrying the smaller child in a yellow blanket and one of the males carrying the older child. The woman was described as a Hispanic female wearing a long red skirt and white boots. The two males were only described as Hispanic,” the sheriff’s office said.

Anyone with information on this incident is encouraged to call the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office at 928-753-0753 ext. 4408.