The skull of missing Cali woman Danielle Bertolini which was found this March in a northern California riverbed has been identified this week, Humboldt County police are reporting.
Originally from the state of Maine, the petite 23-year-old relocated to Fortuna CA in 2010 and, a few years later, vanished without a trace.
Bertolini has not been seen or heard from since February 9, 2014, and shortly after that another woman of similar stature -- Sheila Franks -- likewise disappeared from the same area.
A social media campaign launched by loved ones to bring attention to the two suspicious disappearances and, hopefully, to find each woman alive, failed to produce the desired results.
Franks is still unaccounted for, and DNA tests reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice have now confirmed that the skeletal remains discovered this spring in the Eel River are indeed those of Danielle Bertolini.
Armed with that grim new evidence, her mother says police are treating her daughter’s missing-person case as a crime and her death an intentional homicide.
Investigators are hinting they’ve identified a person-of-interest they believe is somehow linked to both young women who otherwise had no known relationship to each other.
However no arrests have been made, and a suspect has yet to be named.
Anyone with information about either Bertolini’s case (in Fortuna) and/or Franks’ case (in Humboldt) is urged to call the Fortuna Police Department at 707- 725-7550, or the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department at 707-445-7251.
