A tragic discovery has finally brought closure almost forty years after a woman's body was found at the bottom of a ravine in Southern California, authorities revealed this week.
The woman has been identified as Maria Pilar Del Gadillo Carrillo, who had migrated to the United States from Yahualica, a town in Mexico's Jalisco state, in the early months of 1986. She was only 43 years old at the time of her death. The San Diego County Sheriff's Office shared this information in a recent press release.
On August 3, 1986, Carrillo's remains were discovered down an embankment near Poway Road in San Diego County, close to California State Route 67. The circumstances surrounding her death were shrouded in mystery, but a medical examiner concluded that she had been the victim of a homicide.
Despite efforts by homicide detectives to piece together what happened to Carrillo, the case went cold due to a lack of substantial leads. Even with periodic reviews by investigators in the years that followed, no significant breakthroughs were made.
The Mystery of the Unidentified Victim Solved
After years of uncertainty, a breakthrough was made in February 2022 by homicide detectives and analysts from the sheriff's office in San Diego. Using cutting-edge DNA testing and investigative genetic geology, they were able to reexamine the body and positively identify the long-unidentified victim as Carrillo. This confirmation comes around two years after the initial discovery, sparking the reopening of an investigation to uncover more details about what happened to her.
