Body in Spain Identified as That of Missing Orange Man

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of an Orange County man in Spain 1 1/2 years ago has been solved. Forensic authorities identified a body recovered from a grave as that of Steve Juggert, 30. Two men had told police they had buried a robbery victim in the grave.

Although the grave was unearthed in December, it took Spanish officials until last month to positively identify the remains as those of Juggert, an Orange resident who disappeared in December, 1988, while traveling in Europe.

In Orange County, Juggert’s friends and family are arranging to have his body flown back for a memorial service. Bob Oppermann, a brother-in-law who lives in La Habra, said Friday he hopes to have the body returned within days.

“It is a bit of a relief to have it official now,” Oppermann said.

Susie Ramage, an Orange woman who was Juggert’s girlfriend and the mother of their little girl, said one of the biggest tragedies is that Jenni-Sue, now 6, is fatherless.

“I wish that her dad would still be around for her as a future father,” Ramage said. “This has been a long hard pull for all of us.”

Oppermann said Friday that he had been notified two weeks ago by the State Department that official identification had been made. Forensic experts in Spain matched an X-ray of Juggert’s shoulder--taken after rotator cuff surgery--to scars on the murder victim’s shoulder, Oppermann said.

State Department official Cindy Woods, who notified the family from her Washington office about the identification, declined comment.

Oppermann said he sent Spanish officials the X-rays after he and other family members were notified in December that Juggert’s body might have been found. The body was found in a shallow grave outside the coastal town of Huelva, where two West German men arrested by Spanish police for robbing tourists had identified Juggert from a photograph as a robbery victim whom they killed and buried.

The men, Erich Diettmat Dammers and Hans Jurgen Schelitz, remain in Spanish custody and are suspected of killing four people and robbing more than 100 tourists, including at least six other Americans, traveling in southern Spain in the last five years, Oppermann said.

Juggert and the other victims apparently died from drinking doctored beverages, Spanish officials have said.

Juggert told relatives that he was going to Europe on a yearlong break from his county sales job. He began his journey in Madrid but disappeared a few weeks later while hitchhiking toward Spain’s Costa del Sol.