Maria Cortes

Do you know who murdered Maria?
Maria Blanca Cortes was a devoted mother and a hard worker, a 23-year-old woman with ambitions of making a better life for her family in San Diego, California. A Mexican national, Maria worked as a housekeeper and child care provider while taking sewing classes, striving to become a legal citizen. She lived in East San Diego with her boyfriend and their two-year-old daughter, Briana. Friends and family remembered her as a dedicated mother, wholly focused on her little girl. Without a car of her own, Maria navigated the city's public transportation system, a daily reality that often involved multiple bus transfers and long walks home alone in the dark.

The last time Maria was seen alive was around 6:30 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, March 3, 1992. She had just finished work and picked up Briana from a relative's house in East San Diego. Investigators believe she may have been heading by bus toward Linda Vista to attend her weekly sewing class at the Bayside Settlement House. Her boyfriend was at his job in Rancho Bernardo that night. To save time on her long commutes, Maria sometimes accepted rides from strangers, a habit that friends worried about and which may have played a role in the tragic events that followed.

Sometime after she was last seen, Maria was taken to a muddy, open field behind a shopping center in Mission Valley. It was a rainy night, and tire tracks found at the scene suggested she had been driven to the remote location at 7500 Mission Valley Road. There, she was brutally attacked, strangled to death, and stabbed in the groin. Her killer then left her in the field, abandoning her small child with her mother’s body.

At approximately 7:15 the next morning, Wednesday, March 4, a passerby noticed a small child sitting atop what looked like a body in the field and called the police. San Diego Police Department officers arrived to a heartbreaking scene. They found Maria Cortes’s body, and sitting on her chest was her daughter, Briana. The toddler was crying, bloody, and suffering from hypothermia after spending the night in the cold, but she was otherwise physically unharmed. When officers approached, the little girl ran into the arms of a female officer. A bicyclist who was one of the first to come upon the scene recalled getting closer, expecting to find a person who was homeless, only to see the little girl turn and look at him from atop her mother.

The investigation into the homicide was launched immediately by the San Diego Police Department. However, the initial search for evidence yielded few leads. No DNA from the killer was apparent at the time, and with no witnesses to the crime itself, the case quickly went cold. For three decades, the identity of Maria's killer remained a mystery, a painful open wound for her family. The area where her body was found, once a dirt field, has since been developed and is now filled with homes.

Decades later, investigators have not given up hope. In 2022, on the 30th anniversary of the murder, the San Diego County District Attorney's Office highlighted the case, revealing that new forensic technology could potentially provide a breakthrough. A few hairs that did not belong to Maria were found on her body during the original investigation. Tony Johnson, a senior investigator with the DA's office, explained that advances in DNA testing on rootless hairs offered a new possibility of developing a profile of the killer. Investigators were working to have the hairs processed.

The case of Maria Cortes remains unsolved. Her daughter, Briana, grew up without her mother, and the family still waits for justice. Investigators have met with the family, who are deeply motivated to see the case solved. They have urged the public to come forward with any information, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. A detail from that night could provide the new direction needed to finally close the case. Anyone with information is asked to call the San Diego Police Department's Homicide Unit at 619-531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477 to submit an anonymous tip.