Fremont, California: Bones found in the San Francisco Bay Area are those of a Swedish exchange student who disappeared in the area in 1982, authorities said on Monday.
The seven bones located in a canyon in Fremont in 2010 were matched to 21-year-old Elizabeth Martinsson, a foreign student from Uddevalla, Sweden who was going to the College of Marin and living with a family in nearby Greenbrae when she disappeared, coroner’s officials said.
The US Department of Justice matched the remains to Martinsson in November using dental records, Alameda County sheriff’s Sgt. Patricia Wilson, an investigator in the coroner’s division, told the Marin Independent-Journal.
No cause of death was determined, Wilson said, and Martinsson’s remains were cremated and the ashes being sent to her family in Uddevalla, a Swedish town about 50 miles from the Norwegian border. It wasn’t immediately clear why the information was being released now instead of last year when the remains were identified.
Martinsson disappeared after going to a store in the Volkswagen Rabbit she borrowed from the family she was living with.
Ten days later, a 31-year-old convicted rapist was found with the car in Oklahoma. The man, Henry Coleman of Los Angeles, was wanted on a robbery warrant out of California. He was convicted of auto theft and sentenced to five years in prison, but authorities could not tie him to her death.
Coleman told investigators he had bought the car from a man he met at a bar in San Francisco.
Marin sheriff’s officials and Fremont police are collaborating on how to proceed with the case and have requested more tests from the Department of Justice, sheriff’s Lt. Jamie Scardina said.
