After more than three decades, two sisters have finally been reunited with their eldest sibling following a tragic series of events that began with a cold-case murder investigation.
Their story began with a heartbreaking homicide in the Arizona desert. The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office reported that on December 12, 1989, a woman’s body was discovered in Mohave County, Arizona, near Las Vegas. The victim had been stabbed multiple times and left without identification. Detectives were only able to extract a DNA profile, which went unmatched in national databases for many years.
In 2022, the case took a turn when investigators revisited the evidence and found a match with fingerprints from the file. They identified the victim as ‘Maria Ortiz,’ an alias for Marina Ramos from Bakersfield, California.
When Ramos disappeared, she had her two young daughters with her: Jasmin, aged just two months, and Elizabeth, 14 months. Both girls went missing at the same time as their mother, leaving detectives puzzled for decades.
In a breakthrough this year, on August 27, authorities located a woman with a strong DNA connection to the Ramos family—the sisters’ eldest sibling.
Once they made contact, investigators learned that the sisters were abandoned in a park restroom in Oxnard, California, back in December 1989. DNA testing eventually confirmed their identities as Jasmin and Elizabeth Ramos.
Police records indicate the infants were found on December 14, 1989, merely two days after their mother’s body had been discovered. A passerby heard crying from a restroom and enlisted a woman to investigate.
Inside, the toddlers were found lying on the wet floor, unattended. They were handed over to Child Protective Services and were later adopted by a couple in Ventura County.
After 36 years, the sisters now know their true identities. The Sheriff’s Office stated, “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.”
In an interview with ABC 15 Arizona, the sisters, who now go by their adoptive names ‘Melissa’ (formerly Elizabeth) and ‘Tina’ (formerly Jasmin), shared their feelings about the discovery.
“As soon as she said she was a homicide investigator, I had this gut feeling she knew something about my parents,” Melissa recounted.
“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.”
She addressed her biological family, saying, “I want everyone to know that I’m okay. I’m here. I have lived a beautiful life. I have a wonderful husband.”
“They’re going to see their sister, and they’re going to be really emotional about it. They’re going to have feelings towards us that I don’t necessarily know we have yet, you know, but just hoping for all good things.”
Tina expressed her emotions: “I was sad to know that my mom is gone, and I will never be able to see her.
“It still hits me a little bit because she was taken from me, you know, and, like, that’s not right. But at the same time, I was happy to know that she’s not suffering. She’s not in a bad situation. I was happy to know that all those, like, abandonment issues that I dealt with when I was a kid was, like, automatically released for me.
“It felt good to know that I did have family out there that cared for me and had been looking for me even though I didn’t know this.”