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Valasca

Death, horror, torture
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Tattooed man found in bag in La Habra Heights remains John Doe
Residents' complaints about a foul smell led to a grisly discovery at the bottom of a hill on Sept. 12, 2000.
Stuffed inside a black duffle bag was the decomposing body of a man wearing a baseball cap. He died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Nine years and six months after the body was found in the 2500 block of Casalero Drive, the man remains nameless. He's known only as "John Doe #175" to detectives and coroner's investigators trying to unravel the mystery of his identity and his death.

Sheriff's Homicide Detective Margarita Barron thinks the suspect or suspects parked at a dead-end street and threw the duffle bag containing the body over the embankment.

"So why that area? Whoever disposed of the body must have known the area," she said.

Coroner's investigator Dan Machian said John Doe was dead about a month or so before his body was found.

Neither science nor the remains have yielded any answers.

John Doe carried a distinctive mark on his back, near his left shoulder. The tattoo of a snarling red-and-black panther or jaguar in front of an orange moon and white clouds was still visible when the body was discovered.

"We put it out to several TV stations and I never got clues on it whatsoever. We went to different tattoo parlors. Nothing," Barron said.

Machian said the tattoo is fairly distinctive and one would think someone would remember that.

The Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner couldn't get fingerprints because of the body's condition.

In 2003 and 2004, the Coroner's office shipped bone and teeth samples from John Doe to the state lab in Richmond which keeps a DNA database of unidentified bodies found statewide.

There's been no DNA hit yet, according to Machian.

He said they also checked multiple missing persons but none matched.

John Doe was described as either white or Latino, between 21 and 30 years old,


5-feet, 6-inches tall and weighed 135 to 140 pounds.
He was dressed well. He wore "Ralph Lauren" blue jeans, a white or beige ribbed short-sleeved shirt, size 8 and a half "Bass" sandals and a white baseball cap with the word "Jaguars" on its front.

John Doe #175 was cremated in 2001 and his ashes buried in 2004 in a common grave for the county's unclaimed and unidentified bodies.

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_14774435
 
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