More than 46 years after a Riverside County homicide case went cold, investigators reopened it Friday after confirming the victim’s identity.
The California Department of Justice Crime Laboratory identified the victim as Victoria Jean Hargrove after matching her DNA to that of a close relative in Alabama, according to the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.
A genealogist with the county’s Regional Cold Case Homicide Team found the match after officials created a DNA profile for Hargrove and uploaded it to an ancestry database in January.
Her remains were exhumed in December 2024, and bone and tissue samples were sent to a private forensic lab for DNA analysis.
Family members said she disappeared from her home in Opelika, Ala., on Jan. 28, 1980, and that they reported her disappearance to local law enforcement.
Hargrove’s body was found 35 feet down a ravine off Highway 74 south of Cahuilla in an unincorporated community near Palm Desert on Feb. 18, 1980.
The case was reopened in 2008 and 2009, but no new leads were developed.
Investigators are now re-examining Hargrove’s disappearance and what led to her death.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team at (951) 955-0070.