Two Sisters Discovered Alive After 36 Years — And They Never Even Knew They Were Missing

In a remarkable and heartbreaking turn of events, two sisters have finally been found alive 36 years after vanishing — and shockingly, neither of them even knew they had ever been reported missing.

Their story traces back to a decades-old murder case that began in the Arizona desert. On December 12, 1989, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office discovered the body of an unidentified woman in a remote area near the Nevada border, not far from Las Vegas. The woman had been brutally stabbed multiple times and left with no form of identification.

Despite detectives collecting a DNA profile from the scene, for years there were no leads. The case eventually went cold, with investigators unable to find a single match in national DNA databases for more than three decades.

Everything changed in 2022 when detectives revisited the evidence and recovered fingerprint data from the original case file. To their surprise, it matched a woman listed under the name 'Maria Ortiz' — a name that turned out to be an alias for a woman named Marina Ramos from Bakersfield, California.

At the time of her disappearance, Ramos had two young daughters with her — 14-month-old Elizabeth and her infant sister Jasmin, who was only two months old. Both children disappeared along with their mother, leaving their family desperate for answers.

For decades, investigators searched for any sign of the girls. Then, on August 27 of this year, new DNA evidence led police to a woman whose genetic profile matched the Ramos family. She was identified as the sisters’ eldest sibling — the only surviving child of Marina Ramos who had not gone missing.

The two girls have been found safe, with the eldest telling reporters she has lived a 'beautiful life' in the 36 years she has been missing Mohave County Sheriff's Department

When police finally reached out, they discovered that the two missing girls had in fact been found as toddlers back in 1989. According to case records, they had been abandoned inside a public park restroom in Oxnard, California, just two days after their mother’s body was found.

A passerby walking near the restroom had heard faint cries and alerted another woman to check inside. When she opened the door, she found two tiny children lying on the cold, wet floor — frightened, alone, and with no sign of any adult nearby.

The girls were immediately taken into protective custody by Child Protective Services. Afterward, they were adopted together by a loving couple in Ventura County, where they grew up without ever knowing the truth about their past or the tragedy that had taken their mother’s life.

Now, 36 years later, that mystery has finally unraveled. Authorities confirmed the astonishing discovery in an official statement from the Sheriff’s Office, which read: "While we are excited to announce that one part of this 36-year-old mystery has been solved, the search for the suspects involved in the homicide of Marina Ramos continues."

Speaking to ABC 15 Arizona, the sisters — who are now known by their adoptive names, ‘Melissa’ (formerly Elizabeth) and ‘Tina’ (formerly Jasmin) — shared their emotional reactions to learning the truth about their identities.

"As soon as she said she was a homicide investigator, I had this gut feeling she knew something about my parents," Melissa recalled.

Marina Ramos was murdered shortly after witnesses spotted her dropping her children in a restroom accompanied by 'two hispanic males' Mohave County Sheriff's Department

"Whether it was my mom or dad, she knew something. And I don't know, I just ran out of the room and didn't even know how to process what was being said."

She later addressed her long-lost family directly, offering reassurance and gratitude for their decades of searching. "I want everyone to know that I'm okay. I'm here. I have lived a beautiful life. I have a wonderful husband." she said softly.

Reflecting on her siblings’ upcoming reunion with her, Melissa added: "They're going to see their sister, and they're going to be really emotional about it. They're going to have feelings towards us that I don't necessarily know we have yet, you know, but just hoping for all good things."

Her sister Tina, meanwhile, spoke openly about the complex mix of emotions she felt after learning about her past. "I was sad to know that my mom is gone, and I will never be able to see her." she admitted.

Opening up further, she shared that while the revelation was painful, it also brought her a sense of closure and healing. "It still hits me a little bit because she was taken from me, you know, and, like, that's not right. But at the same time, I was happy to know that she's not suffering. She's not in a bad situation. I was happy to know that all those, like, abandonment issues that I dealt with when I was a kid was, like, automatically released for me."

She also expressed gratitude that her family had never stopped searching for her and her sister, saying: "It felt good to know that I did have family out there that cared for me and had been looking for me even though I didn't know this."