Still John Doe #214

By Ruben Vives

March 15, 2010 12 AM PT

Halfway up an embankment, below the junction of the 210 and 118 freeways, lay the charcoal remains of a man’s life: charred newspapers and encyclopedias, a seared carpet, food cans popped open by intense heat.

It was more than a year ago that gusty winds drove a wildfire from the canyons above Sylmar and down to the freeway connector, where it destroyed a small encampment. After the flames subsided, firefighters discovered the burned bodies of a man and a dog.

The man’s body was taken to the Los Angeles County morgue. Since the corpse lacked identification, officials gave it a place-holder name: John Doe #214.

At the time, investigators were confident they would quickly identify the man. Many merchants in the working-class area of the northeastern San Fernando Valley said they believed he was a widely known homeless man who dressed in fatigues. They described him as well-mannered and timid, yet friendly. He mostly wandered the area in search of recyclables, they said.

But the investigators’ early confidence soon turned to confusion and frustration.Now, almost a year and a half later, John Doe #214 remains unidentified.

“We’re at a standstill,” said Det. Jose Martinez of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division. “It’s unfortunate from a human standpoint.”

The small wooden shanty was well-hidden by trees and large bushes. Although it was close to bustling Paxton Street and Foothill Boulevard, few passersby ever noticed it.

In the aftermath of the Marek fire, which broke out in the Angeles National Forest on Oct. 12, 2008, firefighters determined that John Doe #214 and his dog were killed when embers landed on their campsite. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

An autopsy found the man probably died of smoke inhalation, but the inquest offered few clues to his identity. His skull was too burned and misshapen by the heat to permit a facial reconstruction, and his skin was too charred to reveal tattoos or even fingerprints. His teeth offered only a slight hope of identification.

A week later, Martinez and his partner, Det. Josh Byers, began the task of determining John Doe #214’s name. They drove to Sylmar and interviewed commuters, liquor store owners, residents and workers at a recycling center. Had they ever seen a transient with a dog who stopped showing up after the fire?

At first, the trail was hot with leads. Numerous people said they knew of a homeless man in the area. Some even said he had a dog.

Some LAPD officers who patrolled the district told detectives they should be looking for Miguel “Wizard” Ambriz, 48, a well-known transient who wore Army surplus clothing.

But after some checking, the detectives learned that Ambriz had been taken into custody a week before the fire broke out. Ambriz said he was intoxicated and had wandered into an apartment complex where the manager had previously warned him about trespassing. Martinez confirmed that Ambriz was in jail when the fire swept through.

“Everybody was looking for me,” Ambriz said later, sitting at a bus bench dressed in his fatigues, camouflage poncho, jungle hat and black boots. “People thought it was me. Friends were looking for me at hospitals. It felt strange.”

After detectives located Ambriz, they moved on to a new lead: a white homeless man between the ages of 45 and 50 who owned a white dog.

Martinez and Byers tracked down the man’s name, along with a photograph of him. The detectives showed the photo to a liquor store owner who had earlier told them of a transient who never returned to the area after the blaze. The merchant confirmed that the photo was of the person he was talking about.

But just when the detectives thought they had found their man, the owner called Martinez to say that the transient from the photo had returned, alive and well.

He found him sleeping outside the store.

That’s when the detectives shook their heads. They were stuck.

Seemingly back at square one, the detectives returned to Foothill Boulevard. They began hearing more about an Asian man who had not been seen since the fire. Martinez said he initially was skeptical, because relatively few Asians lived in the area. But the description kept coming up.

Some described a short, thin and timid Vietnamese man who was often seen pushing a shopping cart and rummaging through dumpsters for recyclables. Sometimes he had a dog.

“He was very quiet,” recalled Jerry Frias, 44, a warehouse employee.

Danny Madison, 29, an employee at American Eagle Corp., said he regularly noticed the man reading newspapers near a tree. It was there where Marcos Duarte, a parcel deliveryman at the time, spotted him.

“He loved to read,” Duarte said. “I envied him. I’d be rushing to my next route and he’d be there reading his newspaper by the tree.”

Duarte said he spoke to the man two weeks before the fire, but it was difficult to understand him because his English was poor.

Charlie Nunez, 37, who owns a party supply store at Van Nuys and Foothill boulevards, also chatted with him.

“I gave him socks, shirts, my 12-year-old son’s clothes,” Nunez said.

The detectives were excited about the case’s new direction -- but they soon realized that even though many people in the area knew the man, none seemed to know his name or where he was from.

“A lot of people seemed to have had some sort of contact with him,” Martinez said. “But they didn’t try to establish a name. It’s almost as if they shunned that connection.”

Duarte now wishes he had asked the man his name. “I didn’t want to infringe too quickly,” he explained. “I just wanted to let him know he had a friend. That’s the kind of relationship we had.”

Today, the remains of John Doe #214 are in cold storage in the county coroner’s office, sealed in a plastic bag. A small tag bears the case number and place-holder name. Though most bodies occupy a full metal tray, the remains of John Doe #214 take up only half.

His case recently took on new life with the discovery of a clue at a small recycling center less than half a mile from the campsite.

Wilmer De Leon, 31, an employee at Leo’s Recycling Inc., said he got to know a homeless Asian man fairly well because he would often drop off recyclables there.

De Leon, who no longer works at the center, said the man told him he had come from Vietnam many years ago and had been in California for only four years. He also told him he had no family in the area. The man would often read a newspaper while De Leon worked, occasionally approaching him to point out articles about Vietnam.

De Leon said he didn’t know the man’s name by memory but could identify his signature. He said customers were required to sign a sheet before collecting their money, he said. The sheets were kept by the recycling center’s owner, Brigida Rios.

“We are certain we have his name,” Rios told a Times reporter recently. “There are a few customers that come to the same place. You know they go to different recycling centers, but this man came almost every day.”

A search through hundreds of sign-in sheets turned up this name: Hon W. Pan.

De Leon confirmed the man’s name and signature.

It appeared investigators could finally close the case.

But after running the name through local, state and national databases, investigators and coroner officials said they came up with nothing to link the new name to John Doe #214’s remains. Not relatives, not dental records, not anything. Immigration officials said a name without a birth date or registration number would yield nothing on their end. And now, investigators say, they aren’t even sure of the man’s race.

Hearing the news over the phone, Rios said she couldn’t believe it. “It’s so sad he had to die this way,” she said.

In the meantime, De Leon said he has stopped wondering about the fate of his homeless friend.

“I know it was him who died there,” De Leon said. “He never came back.”

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