A mystery in the California desert has deepened after the identification of a woman found dumped in a ravine over four decades ago.
On Feb. 18, 1980, tourists visiting the Coachella Valley area stopped at a viewpoint on Highway 74. As they looked over a guardrail, they saw a body about 20 feet down the ravine. The woman appeared to be in her 20s, dressed neatly in a velour blouse, trousers and tan sandals. But she had no identification on her, and no missing person reports in the area matched her description.
To make matters even stranger, an autopsy could not find a conclusive cause of death, and the woman had no signs of fatal trauma, like knife or bullet wounds. Fingerprints and dental records were taken, but despite detectives’ best efforts, the case went cold.
Unbeknownst to detectives in Riverside County, their Jane Doe had been reported missing 2,000 miles away. In late January, about three weeks before her body was found in California, Victoria Hicks Hargrove, 29, disappeared from her apartment in Opelika, Alabama.
Little is publicly known about Hargrove, although newspaper clippings and marriage records piece together some of her short life. She was one of two daughters born to the Hicks family in Alabama; her father died in a car crash when she was a toddler. Marriage records show Hargrove married for the first time in 1969 when she was 17 years old, then she married the same man again in 1977, presumably due to a separation that occurred sometime between the two weddings. She had worked at a local newspaper, as well as at the Auburn Bulletin, a newspaper located in the university town about 15 minutes away.
Victoria Hicks Hargrove disappeared from Opelika, Ala., and was found dead in Riverside County, Calif., in 1980. (Screenshot via DNAsolves.com)
The circumstances of Hargrove’s disappearance aren’t clear, but it seems she was reported missing by her family around Jan. 28, 1980. Her case wasn’t publicized until September, when the Opelika-Auburn News, her former employer, ran a story about her.
Strangely, someone else Hargrove may have known disappeared around the same time. At the end of January, an editor at the Auburn Bulletin left a note in the office that he was leaving due to private difficulties, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. At first, his wife didn’t file a missing person report, assuming he would return, but by Feb. 5, she contacted police. Law enforcement didn’t think it was foul play or suicide, but no one knew where he was.
Although local newspapers covered his disappearance, no stories seem to exist of his return. He did, however, come back; the man died in Alabama in the early 2000s.
The twin disappearances may simply be a coincidence, as there is no official link between the two. SFGATE asked the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, which is investigating Hargrove’s death, if it knows of any links between the Auburn Bulletin editor and Hargrove.
“Investigators are aware of the other missing person report in Opelika and cannot comment further on it at this time,” public information officer Molly Smith wrote in an email.
An aerial view of Opelika, Ala., at dusk. (Jacob Boomsma/Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Hargrove was only identified recently through advances in DNA technology. In December 2024, the Jane Doe in Riverside County was exhumed for samples, and in January of this year, that sample was uploaded to a commercially available ancestry website. Researchers from Othram, a private lab that assists law enforcement with cold cases, found possible close relations in Alabama. One of them gave a DNA swab, which came back as a familial match.
Hargrove’s cause of death still remains unknown at this time, and the DA’s office said that it doesn’t know why Hargrove was in California. And although there was no cause of death determined at the time her body was found, investigators believe she was killed. “Any leads, no matter how insignificant they may seem” can be emailed to coldcaseunit@rivcoda.org or called in to supervising investigator Billy Hester at 951-955-0070, the DA’s office said.
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This article originally published at Woman found dead off California viewpoint sparks mystery 2,000 miles away.