Remains May Solve Boy’s 1979 Disappearance

James Wilfred Trotter was a gifted eighth-grader who loved baseball and wanted to become an airline pilot like his father. Seventeen years ago, he disappeared while on his way to a junior high school in Huntington Beach.

On Tuesday, authorities tentatively identified skeletal remains found in 1990 in Cleveland National Forest as those of the 13-year-old. The charred and fragmented skeleton was found by a hiker in an area previously ravaged by a fire.

Authorities are investigating whether the teenager could be another victim of serial killer William Bonin, who was executed this year by lethal injection. The body was located off the Ortega Highway, where the bodies of at least two of Bonin’s young male victims were discovered, authorities said.

The remains were in “such a terrible shape” that investigators worked for years to find clues to the identity, Riverside’s Chief Deputy Coroner Dan Cupido said.

Although coroner’s officials are reasonably sure that the skeleton is Trotter’s, they are doing DNA tests.

“It’s not a guarantee,” Cupido said. “But the indicators would take us beyond a reasonable doubt.”

His mother, Barbara Brogli, said Tuesday that she has thought about what she would do if the moment ever came when he was found dead. But when the news finally came last week, all the 57-year-old mother could do was cry.

“Nothing I did to prepare myself helped,” said Brogli, who has since remarried and moved to Colorado. “I was just in shock for a while.”

The case of the missing 13-year-old had struck a chord with investigators at the coroner’s office and Costa Mesa police as well. “It’s one of those cases that bothers you,” Cupido said. “This is a young person who had everything going for him. We’ve watched this case, told each other that we would sure like to solve it.”

On Tuesday, investigators joined relatives in mourning his death, while finding relief that they now have closure.

A break in the case came several years ago in the form of an anthropologist who took an interest in the unidentified skeleton, Riverside deputies said. At first, investigators had believed that the skeleton belonged to a girl because Trotter had been “small for his age,” Brogli and detectives said.

But the anthropologist re-examined the bones and determined that they belonged to a teenage boy. Detectives worked with the California Department of Justice’s missing persons bureau and came up with possible victims who had worn braces and had a chipped tooth. They traced the braces to a Fountain Valley orthodontist who provided dental records that matched the teeth on the skeleton.

“You go through every possibility--was he kidnapped, abducted or just mixed up in a bad crowd,” said John Trotter Jr., the boy’s older brother who now lives in Newport Beach. “Everything goes through your head until you just sort of put in the back of [your] mind that you have to face the facts, that you would never see him again.”

James, known as “Jamie” to his family, wanted to be a pilot like his father and loved playing baseball and riding his skateboard, which he left home on that brisk April morning in 1979.

His mother said she had accidentally overslept and did not have time to drive him to school before heading to work. Jamie told his mother that he would catch the bus to what was then Gisler Junior High. The boy was wearing blue corduroy pants with a T-shirt that said, “I’d rather be sailing in St. Thomas,” where the family had gone on vacation.

“He said, ‘I love you, Mom,’ and rushed out to catch the bus,” Brogli said. “Well, he never got on that bus.”