In 1994, in the vast, unforgiving expanse of the Mojave Desert, two stone hunters stumbled upon a grim discovery. It was not a treasure, but a shallow grave. Authorities who responded to the call found a human skull and a skeleton, the remains wrapped in a black plastic bag.

The forensic team processed the scene, but the bones offered few clues. There were no obvious signs of trauma, and more importantly, no identification. For years, the victim was given a name by the state: “Apple Valley Jane Doe.”

For decades, her case file collected dust. DNA was eventually extracted from the bones, but it matched no one in the national database of missing persons. She became one of 800 unidentified individuals, a ghost in a system, and was eventually laid to rest in a Potter’s Field, a grave for the unknown.

The case remained frozen for 21 years. Then, in 2015, a cold case detective received an alert. A new DNA sample had been submitted to the database, and it was a match. Apple Valley Jane Doe finally had a name: Jovita “Vita” Dizon-Cazo. The discovery didn’t just give a name to a skeleton; it blew open a 23-year-old cold case and uncovered a monster who had been hiding in plain sight.

Jovita’s story began in the Philippines, working in a bar at Subic Bay. There, she met Mike Cazo, a U.S. Navy electronics technician. They fell in love and were married in January 1978. Six months later, their daughter, Michelle, was born.

When Mike’s deployment ended, he brought his new family to the United States, living first in Idaho and then at the naval base in San Diego, California.

By all accounts, the young family was happy. But the demands of military life soon took their toll. In 1984, Mike’s assignments became more frequent. He was deployed again and again, leaving Vita alone to manage the house and raise their daughter. She felt abandoned, like a single parent. The strain grew, and as they drifted apart, Mike began drinking heavily and, in 1985, had an affair while on assignment in Wisconsin.

In 1986, Vita had enough. When Mike returned to their home in Hawaii after an eight-month deployment, he found the house empty. A letter on the table explained everything. Vita was leaving. She wrote that his work was his true priority, that she couldn’t stand the loneliness, and that she knew about the other woman.

Taking Michelle, Vita moved to San Diego to build a new life. She was resilient and resourceful, finding a job at the “Honey Cove” bar in Imperial Beach. It was there she met Michael Richardson. He was everything Mike Cazo wasn’t—he was present, successful, and stable. A businessman who owned his own mechanic shop, Richardson offered Vita and Michelle a comfortable, secure life. They soon moved in together, and by all accounts, Vita was happy.

In 1989, Mike Cazo, desperate to rebuild his family, got himself transferred to the naval station in San Diego. He tried to win Vita back, but it was too late; she was with Richardson.

Mike and Vita finalized their divorce but, for the sake of their daughter, managed to build a friendly co-parenting relationship. They became so friendly, in fact, that a young Michelle began to hope they might one day get back together.

That hope was extinguished on the night of April 30, 1992. Vita told Michelle she was going to Richardson’s house. She was never seen again.

The investigation immediately focused on the two men in her life. Her ex-husband, Mike, who had wanted to reconcile, and her current live-in boyfriend, Michael Richardson, the last person she was supposed to see. But there was no crime scene, no body, and no physical evidence. Both men denied any involvement, and with nothing to hold them on, the case went cold.

The aftermath was devastating. Michelle, then 15, was consumed by grief and fell into a deep depression, leading to multiple attempts to take her own life. Mike, terrified of losing the only piece of Vita he had left, retired from the Navy.

He moved with Michelle to Everett, Washington, to give them both a fresh start, far from the ghosts of San Diego. But he never gave up, calling the detectives every month, year after year, asking for any update. There was never any.

For 23 years, the case remained frozen. Until a new, horrific crime ripped the cold case wide open.

In 2015, police were called to a vehicle on the highway. Inside were two victims, 72-year-old Fan L. and her 30-something daughter, Than L. It was not a car crash. They had been assaulted. The investigation quickly revealed that Than L. was the new wife of Michael Richardson.

Police arrested Richardson, and the story that unraveled was sickening. Than’s niece, a minor, confessed to detectives. She said her grandmother (Fan) and her aunt (Than) had caught Richardson molesting her. They threatened to go to the authorities. To silence them, Richardson ended both their lives.

With Richardson in custody, detectives dug into his past. They discovered “Michael Richardson” was a fiction. He was an escaped convict from North Carolina, where he had been found guilty of taking a driver’s life in 1982. He had escaped, fled to California, and built a new identity as a “businessman” just before meeting Vita.

Suddenly, the man who had been a person of interest in 1992 was revealed to be a practiced, dangerous predator. Detectives, now armed with a clear motive for his new crimes, traveled to Washington state to re-interview Mike and Michelle Cazo.

This time, Michelle, now an adult, was ready to tell the secret she had been holding since she was 10 years old.

She confessed that for three years, from age 10 to 13, Michael Richardson had been secretly and repeatedly abusing her. She had been too terrified to tell anyone, as he had threatened to harm her and her mother if she ever spoke. But just before her mother disappeared in 1992, Michelle, seeing her parents, Mike and Vita, becoming friendly again, finally found the courage. She told her mother everything.

The timeline became horrifyingly clear. The prosecution pieced together Vita’s final hours. Empowered by her daughter’s confession and her rekindled connection with Mike, Vita had gone to Richardson’s house that night not just to leave him, but to confront him for what he had done to her child. It was a confrontation from which she would never return.

Facing overwhelming evidence for the new charges and the damning testimony from Michelle, Richardson pleaded guilty to all three counts of taking a life: his wife Than, his mother-in-law Fan, and, 23 years prior, Jovita “Vita” Dizon. He was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences, ensuring he would never be free again.

With the case finally solved, Mike and Michelle Cazo submitted their DNA to the national database, hoping to find Vita’s remains, should they ever be found. They got an immediate notification. Their DNA was a match. The “Apple Valley Jane Doe” skeleton, found in 1994 and buried in a Potter’s Field, was her.

After 23 years of agonizing uncertainty, Vita’s family finally had their answer. They were able to retrieve her remains, give her a proper burial, and finally begin to mourn. Mike Cazo, haunted by the “what ifs” of his past, never remarried, remaining devoted to the memory of the woman he had never stopped loving. And Michelle, after carrying an unbearable secret for more than two decades, was finally able to find peace.