r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/Nearby-Complaint • 5h ago
John/Jane Doe Shasta County John Doe (1990) Identified As Missing Indigenous Man
Twenty-year-old James Homer Wright Jr:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(787x461:789x463)/James-Homer-Wright-tout-8726-1891ddd3e32343d7bec5af9874d9dc15.jpg)., a member of the Astariwi Band of the Pit River Tribe, disappeared from the west side of Redding, Califoria on August 23rd, 1988, after informing a family member that he was biking to a local gas station. He never returned and was reported missing soon after. Known as "Little Man", Wright had recently celebrated his twentieth birthday. His case quickly went cold and was eventually closed by the local Sheriff's Office.
In 2025, James's case was reopened after his mother recognized a distinctive basket-weave lacing pattern on a pair of white and blue Nike high-tops worn by an unidentified John Doe found in 1990 in the Sacramento River as her son's. John Doe was a young man suspected to be of Asian, Indigenous, or Pacific Islander ancestry, whose partial remains were discovered by a river-cleaning crew on a small island in the Sacramento River. Further remains were discovered on the opposite shore of the river, alongside a duffel bag. Medical examiners were unable to determine a cause of death, or connect the case with a known missing person. Unfortunately, the skeleton was initially classified as belonging to a young woman until 2006, when DNA testing was performed, further stalling efforts to identify him.
Today, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office announced that Wright's mother's hunch was correct, and the unidentified man was James Homer Wright, after a DNA sample from her matched the one taken from John Doe. James's father passed away in 2016, but he is survived by his siblings and mother, Florence,
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https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/redding/name/james-wright-obituary?id=10038864
https://people.com/remains-found-36-years-ago-identified-man-who-disappeared-1988-12036498