The State - News from Oct. 6, 1989

Skeletal remains recovered this summer have turned a 9-year-old missing-person case into a murder investigation, Madera County sheriff’s deputies said. Authorities have identified the remains found in an irrigation standpipe near Madera as those of Robert Der Minasian, 26, of Fresno, who was last seen in 1980 when he went to swap motorcycle parts with a new friend. That friend, identified as Jimmy Lee Sanders, 33, is being sought as the primary suspect in Der Minasian’s death, authorities said. Investigators have long considered Sanders a suspect in Der Minasian’s disappearance, but could not make a case without a body, deputies said.