After 20 Years, Remains of Missing Santa Barbara Teen Identified

During the spring of 1995, Santa Barbara teen Cengiz Nuray was with a group of friends following the Grateful Dead on tour when they stopped at Greyhound Rock Beach in Santa Cruz. Nuray split off to walk alone and left his belongings behind. He never returned. His mother soon reported him missing to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office but received no news about her son’s fate for two decades.

Later that same year, the badly decomposed “partial body” of an unidentified 17-year-old was found floating off Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove, which is approximately 40 miles south of Santa Cruz. Police were unable to link the body to any missing persons reports, so they collected DNA from the remains and classified the body as a John Doe.

Pacific Grove police and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Office recently reopened the case and submitted the DNA to a California Department of Justice laboratory once again. With more advanced sequencing technology now at their disposal, authorities matched the genetic material to Nuray on December 30. The exact cause of death and the circumstances surrounding Nuray’s disappearance are still unknown.