Cosette Ellison

A 15 year old girl's body is found 10 months after she vanished from a bus stop
Ann Cosette Ellison was a 15-year-old freshman at Campolindo High School in Moraga, California, a quiet town in Contra Costa County. Remembered as a pretty, fresh-faced young woman, her life was abruptly cut short, leaving her family and community with decades of unanswered questions. Her father was Richard Ruthven Ellison, a U.S. Navy veteran.

The last time Cosette was seen alive was the afternoon of Tuesday, March 3, 1970. At 3:20 p.m., the school bus, driven by Eugene Yee, dropped her off in front of her family's home at 423 Canyon Road. The residence was set back a quarter of a mile from the road, down a gravel driveway in a wooded, isolated area. The bus driver saw Cosette cross the road, get some letters from the mailbox, and head toward her driveway. He also noticed a man sitting in a truck parked near the Ellison home. On his return trip just ten minutes later, the driver saw that the truck had moved closer to the driveway, but the man was no longer inside. When Cosette's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ellison, arrived home around 4:00 p.m., the house was empty. Cosette’s school books were not in their usual spot, and the mail she had collected was not in the house, suggesting she was taken shortly after she stepped off the bus.

For ten months, Cosette was considered a missing person, a status that frustrated her friends who felt authorities initially treated her case as a runaway. Her father was seen searching for her in a canoe in a creek behind a local school. The agonizing wait for answers ended on New Year's Day, January 1, 1971. Her remains were discovered in a ravine in the foothills of Mount Diablo. Her body was found nude and partially buried in sand near Marsh Creek, off Morgan Territory Road, a remote and forested area.

The investigation by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department has remained active over the decades, with cold case investigators like Paul Holes re-examining the evidence. Suspicion has long focused on Philip Joseph Hughes Jr., a convicted serial killer who was active in Contra Costa County during that era. Hughes was convicted in 1980 for the murders of three women: 19-year-old Maureen Field in 1972, 15-year-old Lisa Ann Beery in 1974, and 25-year-old Letitia Fagot in 1975.

Several compelling, though circumstantial, links point to Hughes as a strong person of interest in Cosette's murder. A woman driving home from work saw Cosette talking to a man near the bus stop on the day she vanished. The composite sketch created from this witness's description of a handsome man in a hat bore a strong resemblance to a photo of Hughes wearing his favorite fishing hat. Furthermore, the location where Cosette's body was found on Morgan Territory Road was the same remote area where Hughes dumped the body of Maureen Field two years later. Hughes’s hunting ground was known to be along the Contra Costa Boulevard corridor, and he had a girlfriend who lived just over a hill from the Ellison family home in Moraga.

Despite the strong similarities and the composite sketch, no physical evidence has definitively linked Philip Hughes to Cosette Ellison's murder. Investigators were told by Hughes's former girlfriend that early in their relationship—before the three murders he was convicted of—he had claimed to have "killed and mutilated three women." This statement has led investigators to consider him a suspect not only in Cosette's case but also in the December 1969 abduction and murder of 17-year-old Elaine Davis of Walnut Creek.

As of April 2022, the murder of Cosette Ellison remains officially unsolved. While Philip Joseph Hughes remains the primary person of interest, the case lacks the hard evidence needed for a prosecution. The Moraga Police Department continues to hold the case file. Decades later, the community remembers the fear that gripped the area during that time and the profound loss of a young girl who simply stepped off her school bus and vanished from the end of her own driveway. Anyone with information regarding the abduction and murder of Cosette Ellison is encouraged to contact the Moraga, California, Police Department.