Two sisters found alive after 36 years and didn't even know they were missing

Two sisters have been reconnected with their eldest sister 36 years after the pair had unknowingly gone missing.

Tragically, their story begins with a brutal cold-case homicide in the Arizona desert with Mohave County Sheriff’s Office confirming that on December 12, 1989, a woman’s body was discovered in Mohave County, Arizona - not far from Las Vegas.

She had been stabbed multiple times and left at the scene with no ID - detectives only managed to gather a DNA profile, entering it into national databases with no matches for decades.

That all changed in 2022, when investigators pulled fingerprint evidence from the original file and matched it to 'Maria Ortiz', which later turned out to be an alias used by Marina Ramos from Bakersfield, California.

Ramos had two young daughters with her when she vanished - Jasmin, just two months old, and Elizabeth, 14 months. They both disappeared along with their mother.

For years, detectives tried to figure out what happened to the girls, but on August 27 of this year, cops tracked down a woman with a strong DNA link to the Ramos family - their eldest sister and only other sibling.

The two girls have been found safe, with the eldest telling reporters she has lived a 'beautiful life' in the 36 years she has been missing (Mohave County Sheriff's Department)

When investigators finally spoke to them, they revealed that they had been abandoned in a park restroom in Oxnard, California back in December 1989, before DNA tests later confirmed their identities as Jasmin and Elizabeth Ramos.

Police records showed the girls were discovered on December 14, 1989, just two days after their mother’s body was found. A passerby heard cries from a restroom and asked a woman to check.

Inside, the toddlers were lying on the wet floor with no adults around - they were handed over to Child Protective Services and later adopted together by a Ventura County couple.

Now, 36 years later, they’ve finally been reunited with the truth of who they are. The Sheriff’s Office said: “While we are excited to announce that one part of this 36-year-old mystery has been solved, the search for the suspects involved in the homicide of Marina Ramos continues.”

Speaking to ABC 15 Arizona, the girls - who now go by their adoptive names 'Melissa', aka Elizabeth, and 'Tina', FKA Jasmin - have revealed what the discovery means to them.

"As soon as she said she was a homicide investigator, I had this gut feeling she knew something about my parents," Melissa shared.

Marina Ramos was murdered shortly after witnesses spotted her dropping her children in a restroom accompanied by 'two hispanic males' (Mohave County Sheriff's Department)

"Whether it was my mom or dad, she knew something. And I don't know, I just ran out of the room and didn't even know how to process what was being said."

Before addressing her biological family, she said: "I want everyone to know that I'm okay. I'm here. I have lived a beautiful life. I have a wonderful husband.

"They're going to see their sister, and they're going to be really emotional about it. They're going to have feelings towards us that I don't necessarily know we have yet, you know, but just hoping for all good things."

While Tina added: "I was sad to know that my mom is gone, and I will never be able to see her.

"It still hits me a little bit because she was taken from me, you know, and, like, that's not right. But at the same time, I was happy to know that she's not suffering. She's not in a bad situation. I was happy to know that all those, like, abandonment issues that I dealt with when I was a kid was, like, automatically released for me.

"It felt good to know that I did have family out there that cared for me and had been looking for me even though I didn't know this."