Unidentified Persons

Two black men, believed to be in their 30s, were stabbed, shot and killed days before their bodies were found by a jogger over the side of Soledad Canyon Road in a rural portion of Canyon Country, according to sheriff's officers. Authorities don't know the motive behind the crime and are further puzzled by a sandwich bag containing about an ounce of rock cocaine found in the underwear of one of the dead men.

Authorities have identified the body of a woman unearthed with six others last November from the yard of the Sacramento boardinghouse run by Dorothea Montalvo Puente. The Sacramento County coroner's office identified the last of seven corpses as that of Betty Mae Palmer, 80, who apparently went to Sacramento from the Redding area in 1986. Officers said that they did not know when when was last seen alive but that she moved into the Victorian house sometime in 1986.

Almost two months after he was dropped off at UCI Medical Center with a potentially fatal brain condition, a Mexican national has been identified. Verijlio Palacio Vasquez, 26, who underwent brain surgery Feb. 20, was identified by a friend who saw his photograph in Rumores, a Spanish-language newspaper in Santa Ana, and contacted the hospital, according to spokeswoman Fran Tardiff.

Nearly four years after remains unearthed from a Brazilian cemetery were identified as those of Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz death camp doctor, the U.S. government refuses to close its books and make public its final report on the case. The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations has rejected requests by a Holocaust survivors group and by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles to release the lengthy report under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

After three years of anonymity in the Orange County coroner's morgue, the body of a young man has been identified as the missing son of William H. Ivers, former assemblyman from La Canada and now director of the state Department of Boating and Waterways. The disclosure was a "relief" for the family, Ivers said Friday, but also painful. Stephen Jack Ivers had been missing since 1984, when he was 19.

The partially decomposed body of a man who may have drowned in the recent heavy rains was found snagged on a piling Tuesday near the mouth of the San Gabriel River in Long Beach, authorities said. Authorities were seeking the identity of the suspected drowning victim, believed to have been between 25 and 35 years old.

Nearly 100 mourners came to a Simi Valley cemetery Monday to pay respects to a child they never knew--a baby girl who was found dead Jan. 6 in a trash bin behind a neighborhood supermarket. The Simi Valley Police Officers' Assn. arranged the funeral at Assumption Cemetery. Some of the mourners, drawn by a police announcement, brought flowers to skirt the small, white casket in which the unnamed child was buried in the shade of a juniper tree.

Police are trying to establish the identity of a homeless man whose skull was cracked when he was struck by a car Thursday. The man, an African American in his mid-30s, was one of four people struck by a sedan that left the roadway at North Main and Alameda streets, Los Angeles police said. Police said he was listed in "severe condition with spinal and skull fractures" Friday at County-USC Medical Center. Also struck and hospitalized were Robert Lee Robinson Jr.

Police said they found a partially decomposed body Tuesday afternoon after a passing motorist reported what appeared to be "a man sleeping" on the west embankment of the Orange Freeway just south of Chapman Avenue in Fullerton. "We have a body that we are going to have to work on to identify," said Cullen Ellingburg, a spokesman for the Orange County coroner's office. "We suspect that he might be a person who was reported missing, but we have no way of confirming that," Ellingburg said.

Sheriff's deputies suspect a body found by two ranch workers inside an overturned storage shed Tuesday was a murder victim. The ranchers found the body wrapped in black plastic on a dirt road near 100 Street East and Avenue F-8 at 8:30 a.m. Judging from the condition of the body, Los Angeles sheriff's homicide detectives believe the victim was killed and then dumped at the site several days ago.