An investigation conducted by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, the Alameda Police Department and the Merced County Sheriff’s Office and Coroner's Office has closed a 30-year murder case of a woman who was discovered on the South Coast in 1992, authorities say.
In May, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office received word from the Merced County Coroner's Office that a local transient identified as Jon Paul had died in January. In order to locate the next of kin, the coroner took a fingerprint analysis, which matched prints belonging to Abraham Rivera, also known as Gregory Marc Riviera, who had been charged with murdering an Alameda woman 30 years ago.
In July 1992, a farmworker in the unincorporated South Coast of San Mateo County found the body of a decomposed young woman near an irrigation pond. The body was later identified as Juliette Rivera, 25. An autopsy showed she suffered blunt force trauma from a flat object to the left rear skull. She’d been reported missing 10 days earlier.
After Rivera went missing, the Alameda Police Department began investigating Abraham Riviera, a 50-year-old acquaintance who also lived in Alameda. Police said that numerous inconsistencies in his statement led him to become a prime suspect in the woman's disappearance. In August 1992, deputies issued an arrest warrant for Riviera for the murder of Rivera, but he escaped from his Alameda apartment and eluded law enforcement for the next 30 years.
Detectives determined later that Riviera had a brother named John Paul, who was still alive. The Merced County Coroner’s Office spoke to John Paul’s daughter, and she said that Riviera and Paul had used each other’s identities to hide from police over the years, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
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