Ronald Joseph Cole went missing in May of 1965 – but he wasn’t reported missing until Oct. 25, 1983.

According to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, Cole was 19 years old at the time he vanished from his last known location: the 400 block of Foothill Drive in Fillmore.

While authorities did not disclose the circumstances behind his disappearance, a volunteer non-profit organization called The Doe Project, which assists investigators across the nation and world with missing person cases, posited that Cole reportedly came up to the Fillmore area from San Diego to stay with family while he tried to find work when he vanished.

The Doe Project noted that “foul play [was] suspected,” a sentiment that local authorities also share.

“Family members of Ronald Cole believed he was missing under suspicious circumstances and suspected Cole’s half-brother, David La Fever, was responsible for his disappearance,” VCSO said in a media statement issued Wednesday.

Ventura County authorities took over the investigation in August 1984 due to the suspicious circumstances behind his disappearance; however, investigators were not able to find physical evidence of a crime, a crime scene or Ronald himself.
Ronald Joseph Cole as seen in a photo from the 1960s that was released by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.
Thus, no criminal charges could be filed against La Fever, despite him being named as a “prime suspect” in the case, the sheriff’s office said, and the case remained open throughout the following decades, even after La Fever died on Aug. 12, 2007, in Anchorage, Alaska.
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A major break came in 2024 when officials with the Henry County (IL) Sheriff’s Office began re-investigating a cold case involving unidentified human remains located near a creek southeast of Geneseo, Illinois, on Oct. 27, 1966.

Geneseo is located in the western part of Illinois, close to the Quad Cities region.

Among the remains was a “human skull with an obvious bullet hole,” VCSO stated, which subsequently led Illinois authorities to investigate the case as a homicide.

During the probe into the remains, Henry County deputies requested assistance from the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit that helps identify unidentified remains. DNA Doe Project requested a sample be sent to a forensic lab, Astrea Forensics, for analysis; Astrea, according to VCSO, specializes in extracting genetic profiles from highly degraded samples.

Thanks to those efforts, the Illinois-based investigation team was able to identify potential family members, and by May 2025, Henry County and Ventura County cold case investigators were working together, comparing notes from the Ronald Cole case.

Fast forward to last week, and the Henry County Sheriff’s Office received notification from DNA Doe Project that the human remains found by the creek on that fateful day in October 1966 were that of Ronald Joseph Cole, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Wednesday.

It is not known how Cole’s remains ended up 1,900 miles away from where he was last seen. The Henry County Sheriff’s Office continues to hold jurisdiction over the homicide investigation.