More than 40 years after a woman’s remains were discovered in what is now Lake Forest, authorities have finally identified the suspected homicide victim, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department announced this week.
Children playing in a culvert near Canada and Old Trabuco roads in April 1983 discovered a human skull, according to a sheriff’s statement.
An excavation uncovered approximately 70 percent of the victim’s remains. And an anthropology examination determined it was a Black or mixed-race woman who was approximately 18 to 24-years-old, around 5-foot-3 to 5-foot-6 with a slight build and a distinctive gold tooth.
The victim’s name remained a mystery for decades.
In 2022, funding from the National Missing and Unidentified Person System allowed for the extraction of a DNA sample from the woman’s remains and testing through Othram Laboratories.
The result was the creation of a genetic profile. Cold case investigators with the Sheriff’s Department teamed up with the FBI’s Regional Genealogy Team, and after years of work were able to identify the woman’s direct family line, and to produce forensic renderings of what she looked like.
In late 2023, investigators got in touch with someone they believed to be a distant genetic relative of the unidentified woman. That person suggested that the renderings of the woman be posted on a Facebook group for missing women from the 1970s and 1980s. A month later, a woman contacted investigators saying she believed the woman was her missing mother.
By comparing DNA samples from the relatives, investigators have positively identified the woman as Maritza Glean Grimmett, who was 20 years old at the time she disappeared, according to a sheriff’s statement.
Grimmett was a Panamanian native who married a U.S. Marine in the summer of 1978 and gave birth to a daughter. She and her family moved to the United States in late 1978 and lived in Columbus, Ohio and Millington, Tennessee through mid-1979.
Grimmett and her husband began divorce proceedings in July 1979. Grimmett told her sisters she was going to California. It was the last time her family heard from her.
The circumstances of Grimmett’s death are unclear. The sheriff’s department indicated that her killing is still under active investigation.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Investigator Bob Taft at 714-647-7045 or at coldcase@ocsheriff.gov. Anonymous tips can also be submitted to OC Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS or occrimestoppers.org
