An unknown woman was discovered dead, unclothed and stabbed, in the Arizona desert. Meanwhile, two babies were found left alone, crying, on the floor of a public restroom in California.

Forty-eight hours and 400 miles separated the discoveries – but investigators would spend 36 years unravelling the stunning link between them.

The events unfolded in December 1989 when authorities came across the lifeless body of a 28-year-old woman on a secluded desert road in Mohave County, two hours away from Las Vegas.

With no identification and no relatives coming forward, she was recorded as Jane Doe and laid to rest in anonymity.

More than three decades would pass with no new leads or answers in the case. But in February 2022 came the long-awaited breakthrough.

Thanks to DNA analysis, the woman, previously referred to as Jane Doe, was identified as Marina Ramos. Additionally, investigators learned she was the mother of two missing young daughters at the time of her death: two-month-old Jasmin and 14-month-old Elizabeth.

For Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Lori Miller, who had kept the Ramos file alive for years, the DNA match opened a new and urgent chapter: if Ramos had children, what had become of them?

‘It haunts me,’ Miller said at the time. ‘I believe they’re still out there. And I believe someone knows something.’

Determined to find answers, Miller started digging.

It took investigators more than 30 years to identify Marina Ramos, who was 28-years-old when she was stabbed to death in December 1989

Ramos’s body was found in the desert in Mohave County (above)

But there whereabouts of her two young children,  two-month-old Jasmin and 14-month-old Elizabeth, remained a mystery

Miller and the Mohave County Special Investigations Unit began by returning to Ramos’s 1989 file and trying to track down members of her family tree.

Ramos was identified as Jane Doe when her prints matched a ‘Maria Ortiz’ who was arrested in Bakersfield, California, in June 1989 and charged with shoplifting.

A records check with police in California showed that Ortiz had a listed address in Bakersfield before her murder, where she’d been living with two of her friends.

When investigators contacted the friends, one of them said they didn’t know anyone called Maria Ortiz. 

However, the friend said she had a cousin by the name of Marina Ramos who had been missing since 1989.

It would turn out that Maria Ortiz was an alias Ramos frequently used.

That lead brought investigators to the door of another of Marina’s cousins, Esther, who had looked after Ramos’ daughters while she was in jail for shoplifting.

Esther told investigators that when Ramos was released, she came to pick the girls up from her home and was accompanied by a mysterious man known only as ‘Fernando.’

Ramos told Esther that she, Fernando, and the girls were planning to go to Ontario, California, to start their lives anew. But within four months, Ramos would be stabbed to death and discarded in the Arizona desert.

Working with Ramos’ family, investigators soon learned she had an older, third daughter who’d been raised by her grandparents.

Ramos was identified as Jane Doe when her prints matched a ‘Maria Ortiz’ who was arrested in Bakersfield, California, in June 1989 and charged with shoplifting

One of Marina’s cousins, Esther, had looked after Ramos’ daughters while she was in jail for shoplifting

Esther said that when Ramos was released, she came to pick the girls up from her home and was accompanied by a mysterious man known as ‘Fernando’ (artist impression above)

MCSO was able to get a DNA sample and use it to search multiple genetic genealogy databases.

In August of this year, Miller received word of a possible match: a 36-year-old woman in Arizona named Melissa. She revealed she had a younger sister, Tina, living in Oregon.

The pair had been adopted together as babies and knew nothing of their biological parents.

‘As soon as she said she was a homicide investigator, I had this gut feeling she knew something about my parents,’ Melissa told ABC15 of the moment Miller reached her by phone.

‘Whether it was my mom or dad, she knew something. And I don’t know, I just ran out of the room and didn’t even know how to process what was being said.’

Through police reports and archived news clippings, Miller was able to piece together the fragments of Melissa and Tina’s past.

On December 14, 1989 – two days after Ramos’s murder – a passerby at Colonia Park in Oxnard heard infants crying inside a restroom. A woman who went to investigate found two babies alone on the wet floor.

Appeals in the press to identify the two sisters were met without reply, and so they were placed into foster care and later adopted by a couple in Ventura County.

The sisters grew up together in a loving home, unaware that they were ever missing or that their mother was murdered, they said.

Appeals in the press to identify the two sisters were met without reply, and so they were placed into foster care and later adopted

But Tina (Jasmin Ramos) had always wondered about her biological family. In search of answers, she had uploaded her DNA to a genealogy website years ago, hoping to track down her natural parents.

That decision provided the match that Miller needed to solve part of the Ramos mystery.

‘This is what I’ve been searching for and wanting for a very, very long time, to figure out where I came from and who my family was,’ Tina told ABC15.

‘I was sad to know that my mom is gone, and I will never be able to see her.’

Both Tina and Melissa, who have families of their own, say they’re still struggling to process the news.

‘I want everyone to know that I’m okay,’ Melissa said. ‘I’ve lived a beautiful life, and I have a wonderful husband. But there are questions I still have, and feelings I’m still discovering.’

The sisters are now slowly reconnecting with their extended family.

Ramos’s sister, Margarita Maldonado, told the outlet she can’t wait to be reunited with her long-lost nieces.

‘I really want to meet them, hug them, hold them,’ she said. ‘[The discovery is] something that we always wanted, to find them alive.

‘And it did happen. You don’t know how much I prayed…never give up. Always keep faith.’

DNA evidence led investigators to Tina and Melissa, who were confirmed to be Ramos’s missing daughters

The search to find the person – or people – who killed their biological mom continues

Although Ramos’s daughters have finally been found, the case is not closed. Investigators are still searching for her killer.

Investigators believe there are at least three suspects in the case.

Back in 1989, eyewitnesses reported seeing a woman with two men at Colonia Park, in Oxnard, California, with Ramos’ daughters shortly before they were abandoned.

‘They actually had a witness come forward and say she saw a female – Hispanic, about five feet tall – and two male Hispanics get out of a black mini pickup somewhere in the neighborhood alongside the park, and saw them in the park,’ said Miller.

‘She saw that the youngest was wrapped in a yellow blanket, and she lost track of them.’

The witness said the woman she saw was wearing a long red skirt and white boots.

Miller believes the three people seen with Elizabeth and Jasmin Ramos are suspects who were ‘indirectly or directly’ involved in Marina’s death.

She is also hoping to identify ‘Fernando’ to determine if he was one of the two men spotted with the girls.

Miller said she is overjoyed to have found Ramos’s daughters.

‘It’s hard to describe the feeling when you’ve worked so hard for so many years, and then you not only come to a conclusion, but it’s turning out to be a happy one,’ she said.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact MCSO at 928-753-0753, extension 4408.