Link Between Skeletal Remains and Murder Suspect Confirmed

The skeletal remains found in a pickup truck at the bottom of a ravine earlier this week do belong to a murder suspect who police believe fatally shot a man at a Northridge home last year, authorities said Friday.

Mark Douglas Snyder of Winnetka, who was 29 when he was last seen about 17 months ago, was identified by coroner’s investigators by comparing his dental records with the remains found Monday at the crash site north of Castaic, said coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier.

Carrier said that although investigators combed the ravine for other clues, they found only a skull, some rib bones, and a lower jaw in and around Snyder’s blue truck. And a rusty gun.

“We did not have an entire skeleton, but we were able to match dental X-rays with the lower jaw found at the wreck,” Carrier said.

Carrier said animals probably ate the missing bones.

The coroner’s department is still trying to determine a cause of death, although a police detective said he believes Snyder may simply have died in the crash.

Since forest rangers spotted the bones off Templin Highway, authorities have suspected that they were Snyder’s remains because the wrecked truck was his.

On Jan. 14, 1993, police think Snyder fatally shot his friend, Christ James Wetzel, 27, in a friend’s garage while the three were fixing a car. Before the shooting, Snyder and Wetzel had argued about Snyder’s sister--who was Wetzel’s girlfriend, friends said.

Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Broad said Friday that investigators believe Snyder fled after the shooting in his green pickup truck, heading north on Templin Highway in the rain. Snyder was never seen after the night of the shooting.

Broad said he believes Snyder went off the side of the roadway and into the ravine on the night of the shooting. But authorities do not know if the accident occurred because Snyder lost control of the truck on wet pavement, or whether he committed suicide, Broad said.

“It looks like it happened the night of the murder,” he said. “We’ve asked the California Highway Patrol to come in and re-create the accident as it occurred, but we may never be able to tell what really happened.”

Police are also trying to determine if the rusted, broken .357 handgun they found in Snyder’s truck was the weapon used to kill Wetzel, Broad said.

“The gun is in such bad shape we might not be able to put it back together and fire a bullet out of it,” he said. “But we’ll try anyway.”

Even though police must wait for that ballistics check, Broad said he thinks a nearly 1 1/2-year-old homicide case is on the verge of being solved.

“It looks like we are going to reclaim our warrants and clear a murder case,” he said.