Headless body in California identified after 12 years

A homicide victim found decapitated and thumbless in 2011 in an Arvin, California, vineyard was identified by law enforcement this week.

The deceased was Ada Kaplan, 64, of Canyon Country near Los Angeles, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office said in a release.

Her body was missing its head and thumbs and appeared to be drained of blood when it was discovered.

“Honestly, it looked like somebody had taken a mannequin, removed the head of the mannequin. … This person took their time to pull into this dirt access road, remove the body, place it on the ground and pose it in what I would consider a sexual manner,” Ray Pruitt, a KCSO spokesman at the time of the discovery, told Bakersfield NBC affiliate  KGET-TV in 2018.

“I remember having a couple nightmares about it afterward,” he added.

Attempts to identify her from missing person cases in and outside Kern County were unsuccessful. The case went cold and Kaplan was buried.

In July 2020, the Kern County Coroner’s Office asked the nonprofit DNA Doe Project for help building a genetic profile of what they called Jane Doe 2011, KCSO said.

Then, last July, the project found Kaplan relatives who agreed to provide DNA samples, and the body was identified.

After KCSO detectives talked to her surviving family, they learned that a missing person report was never filed for Kaplan.

The exact location of her death and the suspect responsible remain unknown, law enforcement said.