On the morning of Tuesday, January 29, 2019, a hiker traversing the brush along a trail heading toward the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles noticed a suspicious bundle discarded off the roadway. Hidden among the foliage near Red Oak Drive and Ferndell Drive on the southeastern perimeter of the expansive 4,200-acre park, the bundle was wrapped tightly in a blanket or sleeping bag. Park rangers were alerted around 11:00 a.m. and quickly realized the tragic nature of the find: the bundle concealed the decomposing remains of an adult woman.
Coroner investigators and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department arrived to cordon off the scenic hillside and initiate a homicide probe. The medical examiner determined that the victim had been dead for at least a week prior to her discovery and had suffered severe neck trauma, establishing the cause of death as asphyxiation by strangulation. Authorities soon matched her description to an active missing person report, identifying her as Iris Griselda Galan Rivera, a 38-year-old Latina woman and undocumented immigrant from El Salvador.
Investigators reconstructed her final known movements and determined that she had vanished ten days earlier. Galan Rivera had been working as a hostess and entertainer at El Chaflan Jr., also known as El Tiburon Night Club, located near the corner of Florence Avenue and Normandie Avenue in South Los Angeles. Security cameras at the nightclub captured her last confirmed sighting at 1:59 a.m. on January 19, 2019, as she ended her shift and walked to her vehicle.
When Galan Rivera failed to arrive for her scheduled shifts over the next two days, her coworkers grew deeply concerned. They went directly to the residence in East Hollywood where she lived with her boyfriend. The boyfriend told the women that Galan Rivera had abruptly left him for another man. Distrusting his explanation, the coworkers went to the police and formally filed a missing person report. While her black sedan remained parked outside the East Hollywood residence for roughly a week following her disappearance, the boyfriend subsequently sold the vehicle.
When detectives confirmed Galan Rivera's identity after the discovery in Griffith Park, they sought to interview her boyfriend, identified by family members as Salvadoran national Alfredo Patricio Mejia Mejia. However, investigators were unable to locate him. The day after Galan Rivera's body was discovered in the park, the boyfriend boarded an Avianca flight and fled the United States to El Salvador after having sold both his vehicle and hers. Galan Rivera's family members later recounted that he had made threatening phone calls to her relatives in El Salvador, angrily complaining about being suspected in her disappearance.
Despite the suspicious circumstances and the swift departure of the primary person of interest from the country, the case stalled without formal charges or extradition proceedings. Galan Rivera's family expressed deep heartache that her undocumented status and line of work contributed to the case fading from public attention. More than seven years later, the strangulation of Iris Griselda Galan Rivera remains officially unsolved, and Los Angeles police continue to welcome any information that could help bring answers and justice to her loved ones.
