Overview
- A Volkswagen Beetle carrying five teenagers crossed the center divider and struck an SUV on June 2, 1978, killing four passengers and leaving one victim unidentified.
- Decades of traditional investigation failed to name the fifth victim, who was listed as an unknown until recent DNA work.
- Riverside County's Coroner's Bureau performed a targeted exhumation using resources from the Bureau of Justice Assistance Missing and Unidentified Human Remains grant program.
- Nonprofit GenGenies applied forensic genetic genealogy to DNA obtained from the exhumation and investigators confirmed the 18-year-old as Mark Alan Smith.
- Mark Smith's sister and law enforcement publicly thanked GenGenies and the Department of Justice's Missing Persons DNA Program, and the case highlights how grants and genealogy methods are closing long cold cases.