Credit: SCCSO
On Dec. 27, 1998, a deceased adult male subject was found wrapped in a tarp down a hillside in Santa Cruz County, California. The decedent was found to be in an advanced state of decomposition. An autopsy revealed the most striking aspect of injury was blunt force trauma but, due to the body’s state of decomposition, a majority of the soft tissue was gone.
A subsequent investigation by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office resulted in the arrest and conviction of three subjects for the murder of this unidentified victim. During this process, the decedent’s identity was never discovered.
During the following 20+ years, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office continued to follow leads regarding the identify of John Doe. In 2021, the Santa Cruz Sheriff-Coroner’s Office, including the Sheriff’s Office Forensics Services team, began utilizing forensic genetic genealogy techniques to finally identify the decedent and make notification to next of kin.
With the partnership of the California Department of Justice Jan Bashinski DNA Lab, Othram, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Latent Print Unit, the decedent has now been positively identified as Eric P. Cupo, who was 22 years of age at the time of his murder.
Detectives have learned that Cupo was born in California. As a young child, he was adopted into a family in Philadelphia and later moved to Florida with his adopted father. Eric briefly returned to Philadelphia at the age of eighteen to live with his adopted mother. From there, Eric moved around the country, and his family lost regular contact with him. Eric is believed to have subsequently lived in both Arizona and Ohio. The timeline of his arrival back in California is not clear.
Cupo’s adopted family and biological relatives have been notified of his identification and are grateful to the Sheriff’s Office for their dedicated and tireless investigation.
Republished courtesy of SCCSO.