Body Found in Desert Area Identified as Missing Girl

A coroner’s autopsy concluded Tuesday that a decomposing body found in a desert region of San Bernardino County is that of 8-year-old Sylvia Elaine Mangos of Twentynine Palms and that the girl died from “blunt injury to the head,” authorities said.

The body was discovered Monday alongside a dirt road in sparsely populated Johnson Valley, eight days after her disappearance from a Yucca Valley swap meet.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Bryant said the girl, a third-grade student at Twentynine Palms Elementary School, was identified by the county coroner’s office from an old healed arm fracture that resulted from a school-yard accident.

Authorities declined to say whether the girl had been sexually molested or to make public the estimated time of death.

An all-out search for the girl’s killer has been launched involving more than 50 investigators from throughout the county.

“I wish we could say we had a suspect in this case,” Deputy Jerry Bucklin said. “As of now, there is none.”

However, Bryant said investigators were looking for two men, 45 to 50 years of age, seen leaving the swap meet in a small, white pickup truck about the time that Sylvia disappeared on March 27. They were also looking for a man about 25 years old, with tattoos on his upper torso and wearing a yellow tank-top shirt, who was seen talking to the girl that day, he said.

Beyond that, investigators continued questioning family members, friends, registered sex offenders and drug dealers in the area, as well as other people who attended the swap meet that Sunday at the Sky Drive-In in Yucca Valley.

The girl’s fully clothed body was discovered about 23 miles northwest of the drive-in by a Johnson Valley resident exercising his dog on unpaved Grandview Road, Bryant said.

The girl’s parents, Gary and Susan Mangos, were notified of the coroner’s findings.

“We want the person who did this to be found no matter what,” said Nancy Raitt, a friend of the Mangos family. “But we have nothing to go on at this time. Nothing.”