A Body in the Morgue: ‘John Doe 84-3271MZ’ : Youth Killed in ’84 Crash Still Unidentified

The dead youth sprawled across the seat of the stolen Pinto station wagon had no wallet and only 45 cents in his jeans, along with a piece of paper with the word “congregation” written in pencil.

He appeared to be 16 to 18 years old. He was barefoot and wore a plaid shirt and cut-off Levis. The coroner would find no drugs in his system, or food.

He died in an accident on Aug. 3, 1984, after he led police on a 30-minute, high-speed chase in the stolen car. That was 15 months ago.

Body Remains at Morgue

Yet police and Orange County coroner’s investigators still do not know who the young man was. His body remains at the county morgue: “John Doe 84-3271MZ.”

For several months, two other unidentified and unclaimed bodies have lain in the morgue. One man was killed in a May, 1984, car accident. The other was run over by a train in July.

Coroner’s investigators say it’s not unusual for adults to die without surviving relatives or friends to identify them or claim their bodies. A teen-ager is harder to explain.

“The thing about him was he was so young,” said Bernie Mazuca, a senior deputy coroner’s investigator assigned to the case of John Doe 84-3271MZ. “ Somebody had to know that this kid ran away.”

Methods for Tracing

There are established procedures for coroner’s investigators trying to learn the identity of a body. They send fingerprints through county, state and federal law enforcement computer systems.

Dental X-rays and charts are compared with those on file with the state Department of Justice in Sacramento. Bulletins describing the body are teletyped throughout the country and compared with reports of missing persons.

In the case of John Doe 84-3271MZ, the efforts were futile.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Rick Plows, senior deputy coroner’s investigator. “We normally expect to have them identified in a reasonable time period, within days or a week or so.”

No rules dictate when the coroner’s office gives up the hunt. Investigators say they believe that in cases like that of John Doe 84-3271MZ, somebody eventually will turn up to identify and claim the body.

John Doe 84-3271MZ was Caucasian with brown hair and eyes. His only distinctive trait was that he was unusually tall--6 feet, 4 1/2 inches. He weighed about 160 pounds.

Fast Growth Possible

“You’d think that with a kid that tall and young he would stand out,” said Chief Deputy Coroner Jim Beisner.

But Mazuca said the young man’s height might prove a hindrance. “At that age, kids grow up fast,” she said, and a missing-persons report could list him as shorter than he was when he died.

“He could have disappeared six months or a year ago and grown another five inches,” Mazuca said.

There were no drugs in the young man’s system, Plows said, nor were there any unusual marks or tattoos. His stomach was empty, Plows said, and there were no indications of recent fractures or surgical scars that would have led investigators to area hospitals.

Because his hair was short, investigators thought he might have been in the military. He wasn’t.

The absence of any adult or juvenile criminal record puzzles investigators because he apparently had stolen a car. The paper with the word “congregation” leads investigators to believe that he might have been a member of a religious group.

The coroner’s office gets about a half-dozen unclaimed and unidentified bodies a year, Plows said. Eventually, they are cremated at a cost of about $450, but the coroner’s office has considerable discretion in deciding when. Normally a body will be kept for six months to a year, but a youth such as John Doe 84-3271MZ, whom investigators have reasonable hope of identifying sooner or later, is kept longer.

Often, the coroner’s office keeps fingerprints on file and removes the jaws before cremation so that the person’s identity can be confirmed if friends or relatives do show up.

About all investigators know about the young man is that about 4:50 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1984, he spied the Pinto station wagon parked in front of a 7-Eleven in Solana Beach north of San Diego. The motor was running and the keys were in the car, authorities said.

The woman who owned the car was in the store when she heard the door slam, Plows said. She raced outside and grabbed the door handle but fell to the pavement as the car sped off, he said.

It was shortly after 10 a.m. when Border Patrol agents spotted the car and the chase began, sometimes at speeds up to 70 m.p.h. At MacArthur Boulevard and San Joaquin Hills Road in Newport Beach the car veered off and rammed two other cars, seriously injuring the drivers.

Newport Beach Police Officer Tom Little said it appeared that the driver may have crashed into the cars in a suicide attempt.

Because of the youth’s age, coroner’s investigators liken the case to that of Michael Shannon White, a 15-year-old runaway who was shot by Anaheim police on Oct. 4, 1984, allegedly after stealing a car and lunging at officers with a knife.

Like the more recent John Doe, White had no identification. It took coroner’s investigator Pam Luster a month to identify him and find his relatives in Florida. The major clues were inscribed matchbooks and a wallet that had Union 76 markings on it.

“She just kept digging and digging,” Beisner said.

Luster said she had dreams about the case before it was solved. “I remember I once woke up thinking, ‘I’ve got him identified,’ ” she said. “Then I realized it was just a dream.”

Mazuca and Plows aren’t plagued with nightmares over the identity of John Doe 84-3271MZ, but they are troubled by the fact that he remains unidentified and unclaimed.

“He wasn’t a bad-looking kid,” Plows said. “But what was his motivation (for stealing the car)? Why did he do it?”