Partial skeletal remains discovered on a beach in Ventura County in 1984 have been identified as a 33-year-old man who, along with another man, died at sea in 1978, officials announced.
In May 1984, deputies with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department were dispatched to Silver Strand Beach in Oxnard on reports of human skeletal remains, the department said in a news release.
The remains, which consisted of a jawbone with teeth, were determined by the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s office to be long to an adult male between the ages of 19 and 99.
It wasn’t until 2006 that a DNA profile on the jawbone was entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
“Despite this lengthy journey, the man could not be identified and became known as Ventura County John Doe (1984),” authorities said. “Details of the case were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.”
Some 19 years later, the county medical examiner’s office provided the sheriff’s department with forensic evidence to submit to a DNA laboratory in Texas, which was able to use advanced DNA testing and develop a comprehensive profile.
“This investigation led to the positive identification of the man, who is now known to be Donald Scott Reich, born Dec. 16, 1944,” officials said. “Reich drowned in a boating accident in January 1978, and his body (missing a jawbone) was recovered after being found on along the rocks of a jetty about a month later.”
Reich was a professional organist who had recently married and moved to Ventura County, where he worked at the Wagon Wheel Junction, an entertainment complex in Oxnard that included a roller rink and a restaurant.
The 33-year-old, according to the release, owned a boat in need of repair. While at work, he met a mechanic, 20-year-old Michael Gray, who offered to help him fix the boat.
Both men were last seen at the harbor at around 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, with investigators believing the pair took the boat out to test the engine and either ran out of gas or endured an engine malfunction.
They were reported missing that same night, prompting an air and sea search that lasted through the night.
The following day, wreckage of the boat was found strewn across more than a mile of coastline at Mandalay Beach.
“Investigators believe the boat lost power, drifted and got caught in the surf and was ripped apart by the sea and shore,” the release noted.
Gray’s body was spotted by helicopter floating approximately four miles offshore, and while most of Reich’s body was found a month later, his jawbone and teeth wouldn’t be found for another six years, resulting in a now solved 41-year investigation.