Elizabeth Lisa Ramos was 14 months old when she disappeared from Bakersfield, California, on August 1, 1989, along with her two-month-old sister, Jasmin, and their mother, Marina Ramos. In December 1989, Marina’s body was found off Highway 93 near Dolan Springs in Mohave County, Arizona; she had been murdered. For decades, the victim was a Jane Doe and the children’s whereabouts were unknown. Only after Marina’s remains were identified did authorities learn the infants were missing.
In 2022, an investigator with the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office resubmitted the Jane Doe’s fingerprints using updated FBI technology, which returned a match to Marina Ramos, a 28-year-old mother from California. That fingerprint hit—linked to prints on file from a prior arrest—finally gave her a name and revived the search for her daughters.
Contemporaneous accounts and later reporting indicate Marina had left Bakersfield with her girls while traveling with a man known as “Fernando,” reportedly headed to Ontario, California. Two days after Marina’s body was discovered in Arizona, two infant girls were found abandoned in a public restroom in Oxnard, California; they were placed into foster care and later adopted together in Ventura County, growing up unaware of their origins.
In 2025, familial DNA and renewed investigation connected the now-adult women to Marina, confirming them as Jasmin and Elizabeth Ramos and resolving the question of what happened to the missing sisters. Law enforcement has re-emphasized the ongoing homicide investigation and the need for information about those responsible for Marina’s death in the Mojave Desert.
Today, Elizabeth’s original missing-person entry—documented in NamUs—reflects the Bakersfield last-seen date and basic descriptors from 1989, while narrative case histories compiled by missing-persons researchers preserve the painful arc of this family’s story: a mother taken by violence, infants separated by abandonment, and decades of silence broken only by patient forensic work and the hope that the remaining questions will be answered.Last Seen: Aug 1, 1989
