SAN DIEGO — Cold case detectives have identified a murder victim more than 50 years after her body was found in a suitcase floating in San Diego Bay.
Investigators are hoping the name and photo of the victim may lead to the killer who murdered Arminda da Silva Ribeiro.
Two fishermen found Ribeiro’s body on June 13, 1973 along the boardwalk near the U.S. Coast Guard station on N. Harbor Drive.
CBS 8 was on the scene at the time with a film camera.
“Shortly before noon today, a couple of fishermen here in the Embarcadero came down to check their boat and found a large suitcase under the pier. They opened it up partially and saw what appeared to be human parts in the suitcase. Search in the immediate area disclosed two human legs,” said SDPD officer Michael Sgobba in a 1973 interview.
Inside an orange suitcase, officers found a dismembered torso and arms with the hands reportedly tied together with nylon cord. The body also had visible stab wounds. The head and legs were found in trash bag floating nearby in the bay, CBS 8 reported at the time.
CBS 8 filmed a re-enactment of the crime in 1973 in an effort to get witnesses to come forward. Despite those efforts and a lengthy investigation by police the victim remained unidentified for 50 years.
Then in 2020, SDPD cold case detective Lori Adams took another look at the case.
“In 1973, DNA was not used in forensics and was not used in law enforcement,” Adams said. “When I recognized that this case was unsolved, I contacted the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office and spoke with them about the possibility of exhuming her so we can get DNA.”
Ribeiro's remains were exhumed from the Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego.
Adams then turned the remains over to Othram, a cold-case DNA lab in Texas that specializes in using genetic genealogy to identify relatives of both crime victims and suspects.
“We were able to trace back a distant relative that was from New Jersey,” said Othram CEO David Mittelman. The murder victim’s relative was a fourth to sixth cousin, Mittelman said.
“So, this person would have done consumer testing at one point or another, had uploaded their data to one of these databases, and had selected the consent option for using their search results in a law enforcement search,” said Mittelman. “This is quite a distant relationship, fourth to sixth cousin.”
Through interviews with the relatives, Detective Adams eventually identified the victim as Ribeiro, age 29 at the time of her death.
“We’re trying to understand why and how she arrived in San Diego. The family and the friends that we have spoken to in Newark, New Jersey tell us that she has no connection to California and no connection to San Diego,” said Adams.
Police found out Ribeiro immigrated to New Jersey from Portugal 1968. She only spoke Portuguese. And she had worked in New Jersey at a tractor-trailer business.
“The Portuguese community in San Diego was robust back in the 70s and 80s. And that was in the Point Loma area, which is very close to where the Coast Guard station is now and the Embarcadero,” said Adams.
The killer remains unidentified. If you recognize Ribeiro's photo or know anything about her, you are urged to contact the San Diego Police Department. Or you can remain anonymous and contact San Diego Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
WATCH RELATED: David Mittelman, CEO of Othram lab talks about DNA work on the Arminda Ribeiro cold case: