MURDERED: Marina Ramos

Ashley Flowers (0:00)

Hi, Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And you know what I love more than a girl's trip?

Brit Prawat (0:05)

Nothing.

Ashley Flowers (0:06)

Literally nothing. There is something about being with your friends away from home base and routine. It can make even the most mundane things seem to have this like spark of adventure. Take for instance, a lone tree in the middle of the Arizona desert. Back in December 1989, four friends from Ohio, driving through the desert in search of some ghost town marked on their map, decided to stop and take a picture together in front of a tree. Proof of their escapades probably. Now they never found the ghost town that they were looking for. What they found instead by sheer happenstance would unlock layered, decades long mysteries that get tossed around like loose pieces of a puzzle.

Until one investigator finally came along and slowly started to put those pieces together.

Leading to a shocking discovery in 2025 that has her this close to solving the case.

And you might have the remaining missing pieces to solve the mystery of who murdered Marina Ramos.

So buckle up, Crime Junkies. You are in for a wild ride.

It's December 12th, 1989, when those four friends turned their car onto a dirt road east of Highway 93, in the very northern part of Arizona, like close to Nevada. Three miles down is where they spot a yucca tree that they decide to take a picture in front of. They're the only ones out there, save for this dead animal that they can see not far off. So they snap their picture and hop back in their rental car in search of a ghost town marked on their map. They're not having much luck actually finding this town. Wink, wink, maybe that was intentional. I don't know. But not wanting to stray too far into just like the vast desert, there is no map quest, like this is hard. They decide just to turn around. And as they head back in the direction of that yucca tree, there's something that just like nags at them. There was something about the dead animal that was bothering them. I don't know what, maybe the same mysterious force that told them to the tree to begin with. But they decide to go back and have another look. But it's no animal. It is a naked woman laying dead in the road. And it's likely only because of them that she was ever found. Now it looks like this woman hasn't been out there long. Even though they don't see anyone coming or going from any direction, they still don't want to get out of their cars, as you can imagine. Now they know they need to notify authorities, but it's going to be a hike to the nearest town in Kingman, Arizona. So they snap some pictures of the woman's body from the car, I assume just in case she's gone by the time they can get police back out there, or maybe as proof to police so they would take them seriously. But deputies with the Mojave County Sheriff's Office don't brush them off. Right after getting the report, they hop in their cars to follow the women back out to the body, which I can't reiterate enough is truly out in the middle of nowhere. Today, the closest paved road is White Hills Road and it's over 200 feet away. But even that was a dirt road back then and the highway is miles off. Otherwise, there are just shrubs and trees nearby and mountains in the distance.

But shockingly, at least to me, is that the detectives conclude that the woman wasn't just dumped there. She was murdered right there where she was found and violently. Just some six to 24 hours before being discovered. It was ultimately blood loss that killed her. There are blunt force injuries all over her body and slash marks at her neck. Whatever clothing she was likely wearing at some point is nowhere in sight, likely cut off her with the same kind of knife that was used to slash her throat. Because they did find one piece of a bra strap which they collect. And there's nothing that could easily be used to identify this woman. I mean, the only items that they find way out there are this empty coke bottle and a long piece of black yarn and some used toilet paper near a spot where it looks like somebody like did their business right in the sand.

But the real clues were left behind in the desert sand itself.

Tire marks, drag marks, and what they say are two sets of shoeprints. And Brit, I have to show you these pictures because these are some of the most well defined crime scene shoeprints that I have ever seen in my entire life.