SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Officials in San Mateo County have closed the 30-year cold case of an East Bay woman's murder after the main suspect was found dead under a different identity earlier this year.
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The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday said that fingerprint analysis confirmed that Gregory Marc Riviera was found dead in Merced County earlier this year, nearly 30 years after sheriff's detectives issued a warrant for his arrest in the 1992 murder of 25-year-old Alameda resident Juliette Rivera.
Riviera was wanted by the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Marshals Service, and he was included on a list of most wanted fugitives in 15 Northern California counties.
Merced County coroner's officials contacted San Mateo County sheriff's officers in May, after the fingerprints of a man identified as "Jon Paul" matched Abraham Rivera, an alias of Gregory Marc Riviera. "Jon Paul" had died on Jan. 29 of this year.
The agencies confirmed that "Jon Paul" was actually Gregory Riviera, learning that he had a brother named John Paul.
The sheriff's office said that John Paul's daughter told the Merced County coroner that John Paul was still alive, and that John Paul and his brother had used each other’s identities over the last three decades in order for Gregory Marc to evade law enforcement.
Sheriff's officials then announced on Tuesday that the case was closed, five days shy of the 30th anniversary of issuing a warrant for Rivera's arrest.
Juliette Rivera was first reported missing on July 7, 1992. Alameda police officers contacted Gregory Riviera, an acquaintance of Rivera whom the sheriff's office said emerged as a suspect because of "numerous inconsistencies" in his statement to police.
Twelve days after she was reported missing, a farmworker in unincorporated San Mateo County's south coast area found Rivera's badly decomposed body. The sheriff's office said Riviera abandoned his Alameda apartment on or around July 29 of that year.
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