2023-12-28 18:31:24
More than 45 years after a body was found, investigators in the American state of Arizona have discovered the identity of the dead man. The victim has been “clearly identified” as Luis Alonso Paredes, Mohave County police wrote on Facebook this week. Hikers found the man’s remains on November 23, 1976 in a shallow grave in a desert area near the Arizona-Nevada border.
Sofia Dreisbach
North American political correspondent based in Washington.
At that time, the investigators took fingerprints, but were unable to assign them to anyone due to a lack of national databases. Investigators who reopened the case in October of this year were now able to identify Paredes’ digital fingerprints using such data.
The man remained a phantom for decades. It was known that he was 1.80 meters tall, weighed between 63 and 68 kilograms and was between 30 and 35 years old. But even a black-and-white phantom photo did not provide any information about the victim, who had been shot in the head at close range. The case became a so-called cold case for almost five decades.
Circumstances of death remain unclear
Nothing is still known about the circumstances of Paredes’ death. According to the latest information from investigators, the man is said to originally come from El Salvador. However, at the time of his death, he was living and working in the Las Vegas area. “It is possible” that the victim also worked for the American Coast Guard and Navy around ten years before his death in San Francisco Bay.
In the news about Paredes’ late identification, investigators are now calling for anyone to come forward with further information. So far it has not been possible to locate the victim’s relatives.
Jan Schiefenhövel Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6 Christiane Heil Published/Updated: Recommendations: 26 Kim Maurus Published/Updated: Recommendations: 13
In recent years, both improved technology and national databases accessible to investigators across the country have led to investigative breakthroughs in decades-old cold cases. For example, the suspected murderer of a woman in North Carolina was arrested in 2018 based on a single fingerprint – 31 years after the crime in California.
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