A pair of Nike high-top tennis helped crack a nearly 4-decades-old missing-person mystery in Shasta County, officials said.
James Homer Wright Jr. was reported missing in 1988, and his remains, which were unidentified at the time, were discovered two years later on a small island near the Sacramento River in Redding. Four decades later, multiple searches and DNA testing confirmed they belonged to Wright, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office said in a Thursday news release.
The remains were first found in October 1990, when a person volunteering with a cleanup crew found a shoe in the shallow water off Wixon Island near the South Bonnyview Road Bridge. When the person attempted to put the shoe in her bag, she realized it was attached to a body, according to an Oct. 22 news article that year in Redding’s Record Searchlight.
Initially believing the skeletal remains belonged to a woman between 18 and 23 years old, authorities identified the distinctive “basket-weave” pattern of the blue lacing of the white size-6 shoes as a key clue in the investigation, according to an Oct. 30, 1990, article in the Record Searchlight. Authorities believed that the person had been dead for at least a year when the shoes were found, the outlet reported.
Investigators reopened the case of Wright Jr.’s disappearance in September 2025, the Sheriff’s Office said in its news release. His mother had recognized the shoes found with his remains, and the Redding Police Department helped the Sheriff’s Office in pursuing the new lead.
DNA testing wasn’t available for California investigators until about 2004, but the remains were identified as male in 2007, the Sheriff’s Office said. Following the reopening of the case, DNA testing in March revealed that the remains belonged to Wright Jr., the Sheriff’s Office said.
His family was notified on July 15 after additional investigation to confirm the DNA results.
Madilynne Medina
Source link
