Marilee Bruszer

For 37 years, she was known only as the Juab County Jane Doe, a young woman whose life was cut short and whose identity was a mystery. It wasn't until 2015 that DNA technology finally gave her a name: Marilee Lee Bruszer. Born on November 4, 1944, Marilee was 33 years old and living in Long Beach, California, when her life took a tragic turn. She was a daughter and a sister, a woman whose family would spend decades searching for answers after she vanished.

Marilee was last seen on August 22, 1978, in Long Beach. Her family reported her missing, and police classified her case as that of an "endangered missing" person. Twelve days later and more than 600 miles away, on September 3, 1978, three women fishing near the Yuba Dam at Yuba Reservoir in Juab County, Utah, made a devastating discovery. They found the naked body of a woman. An autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death was strangulation. The only items found with her were a double-hooped earring and a white barrette.

The investigation into her identity was immediately hampered by inaccurate estimates. Investigators initially believed the victim was between 18 and 22 years old and had been killed anywhere from several months to three years before her body was found. Her height and weight were also misjudged. These incorrect details, combined with the vast distance between where she disappeared and where she was found, made connecting the dots nearly impossible. For years, investigators pursued leads, comparing her dental records to those of other missing women from the region, including Nancy Wilcox and Susan Curtis, but no match was ever made. The case eventually went cold.

The first major break came unexpectedly in 2013. A detective in the Davis County Sheriff's Office was sorting through an evidence locker when he found a small, mislabeled bag containing hair marked "Hair from Yuba Lake body." It was believed the evidence had been misplaced decades earlier by a former captain who had worked for both the Davis County Sheriff's Office and the state medical examiner's office. The hair was sent to Juab County investigators, who in 2014 submitted a sample to the University of North Texas Health Science Center for advanced DNA testing.

Forensic scientists successfully created a DNA profile from the hair. That profile was entered into the national database of missing people, where it generated a familial match with DNA samples previously submitted by Marilee Bruszer's mother and a sibling. On August 20, 2015, the Juab County Sheriff's Office was notified of the match. Two days later, on the 37th anniversary of her disappearance, the Long Beach Police Department informed Marilee's surviving family members that their long search was over.

Following the positive identification, the Long Beach Police Department announced in October 2015 that it was officially reopening the investigation into Marilee Bruszer's disappearance, now classified as a homicide. After decades of uncertainty, her family finally had the painful confirmation of her fate, but the questions of who was responsible for her death and why remain unanswered. The case is an active and ongoing cold case homicide investigation.