Thelma Jeanette Gaston disappeared from her Los Angeles home on June 28, 1981, after a note was found on her front door saying that she had gone to tend to a sick cat. Mrs. Gaston, then 80, never returned.
According to local media reports at the time, the police said a companion half her age — described in court proceedings a “bankrupt carpet salesman” and an “incompetent scoundrel” — had placed the note in an attempt to conceal her murder. In 1983, that man, Lawrence Remsen, was convicted of murder and 12 other counts, including forgery, grand theft and attempted grand theft.
But Mrs. Gaston’s remains were never identified.
On Wednesday, 45 years after the disappearance, the sheriff’s office in Riverside County, Calif., east of Los Angeles, announced that officials had positively identified a female homicide victim as Mrs. Gaston. The remains were found on Nov. 28, 1981 — just months after Mrs. Gaston’s disappearance — when a person gathering firewood in the Santa Rosa Mountains near Palm Springs discovered a shallow grave with a severely decomposed body.
The authorities were not able to make an identification at the time. But this May, investigators were finally able to make a positive match using DNA testing, genetic genealogy and dental records, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
“Mrs. Gaston has her name — and her story — returned to her,” the department said.
The discovery puts to bed decades of mystery.
Mrs. Gaston was a widow worth $20 million when she died, according to media reports at the time. The Los Angeles Times reported that she had amassed her fortune by acquiring real estate at delinquent-tax sales. At his trial, Mr. Remsen testified he became an aide who helped her manage her business affairs. The prosecution argued that “he merely ran errands and tried to ingratiate himself” with Mrs. Gaston, The Times reported.
The prosecution at the time described Mr. Remsen, who is 83 and remains in prison, as a “bankrupt carpet salesman who had been befriended by the widow,” according to The Times.
During his trial, Mr. Remsen admitted to a scheme to swindle her but denied the murder charge. He said he found Mrs. Gaston’s body in her kitchen in Rancho Park and decided to take advantage of her death. So he took her body to South Laguna Beach, blew up a raft, attached weights to her body and tossed her overboard, according to media reports, all while maintaining a story that Mrs. Gaston had taken a trip and left Mr. Remsen in charge of her estate.
Prosecutors argued Mr. Remsen murdered Mrs. Gaston in an effort to cash out her estate, forging multiple documents and transactions. Soon after her disappearance, Mr. Remsen was named in letters to Mrs. Gaston’s business associates as the person who was handling her financial affairs. The letters, investigators said, were forged and stamped with a stolen notary public seal.
At one point Mr. Remsen tried to buy a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz in Mrs. Gaston’s name.
“I figured I was going to get what I could get and leave the country,” Mr. Remsen testified, according to a report in The Times.
But some of Mrs. Gaston’s friends and associates became suspicious, The Times reported. Mrs. Gaston was not known to be a frivolous spender, and a banker alerted the police to the attempted car purchase.
Mr. Remsen fled his Newport Beach home shortly after Mrs. Gaston’s disappearance and was arrested in September 1981 when he tried to cross the border from Mexico. A judge sentenced him to 15 years to life and called him an “incompetent scoundrel.”
Mr. Remsen is serving his life sentence at the California Institution for Men in Chino and has been denied parole multiple times. His next parole hearing is scheduled for July 2028, according to prison records.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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