Woman found in shallow grave ID’d after 44 years as millionaire tied to estate murder plot

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG. Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxNews.com. A woman whose remains were found in a shallow grave in Riverside County, California, more than four decades ago has been identified as a multimillionaire real estate investor who vanished in 1981. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Bureau said advances in investigative genetic genealogy, along with dental records, confirmed the victim was Thelma Gaston, 80, whose disappearance sparked a high-profile Los Angeles murder investigation. The case began Nov. 28, 1981, when people searching for firewood near Sugar Loaf Mountain discovered skeletal remains protruding from a shallow grave. Riverside County sheriff's investigators recovered the remains the following day near Highway 74, but the body had decomposed so extensively that authorities were unable to determine who