Detectives in California announced Wednesday that they had identified remains found in Placer County in 1986 as a woman who disappeared in South Lake Tahoe 15 years earlier.
Donna Lass, 25, was last seen on September 7, 1971, near an apartment she had rented the day before but not yet moved into. She was walking with an unknown man. The South Lake Tahoe Police Department launched an investigation, but Lass was never found and the case went cold.
in 1986, Placer County deputies found a skull off Highway 20 near Interstate 80, several miles northwest of Lake Tahoe. With no additional evidence found at the time, the skull was stored at the coroner’s office “pending further advancements in forensic technology.”
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The case was assisnged to a new cold case team started by the sheriff’s office and the Place County District Attorney’s Office, which sent the skull to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services, which matched DNA from the skull with DNA from a member of Lass’s family.
South Lake Tahoe Police notified Lass’s family of the discovery and will be looking for any further leads.
At the time of Lass’s disappearance, there were suspicions that she may have been victim of the Zodiac Killer because of a postcard sent to authorities showing a Sierra scene and a Christmas card sent to her sister after her disappearance. Investigators used clues on the postcard to search in the Tahoma area, on the western shore of the lake, and Zephyr Cove, on the eastern shore in Nevada. The searches turned up nothing.
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