Editor’s Note: The following article contains graphic details. Reader discretion is advised. The video above provides an update on the investigation from 2018.

Decapitated Body Found in Arvin Vineyard Identified After 13 Years

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — In a shocking development, the decapitated body discovered almost 13 years ago in a vineyard near Arvin, California, has finally been identified.

Back in March 2011, a woman’s decapitated body was found in a Kern County vineyard.

“The body was completely nude and lying on its back on the dirt roadway, appearing to have been deliberately posed,” shared former Kern County Sheriff’s Department member, Ray Pruitt, in an interview with Nexstar’s KGET in 2018.

While finding bodies in vineyards and orchards in Kern County was not uncommon, former Kern County Sheriff’s Lt. David Hubbard described this particular discovery as “gruesome” and “very unusual.”

“Mutilated bodies in homicides are pretty rare,” Hubbard said in 2018. “We don’t come across too many of them. Full decapitation is especially uncommon.”

According to Pruitt, the blood had been drained from the woman’s body, and the crime scene itself was meticulously cleaned.

“The body wasn’t simply dumped out of a moving car or hastily left on the side of the road,” Pruitt explained. “The perpetrator took their time, pulling into a dirt access road, removing the body, placing it on the ground, and posing it in a sexually suggestive manner. They wanted the body to be found like that.”

Despite extensive efforts, the case quickly went cold due to the inability to identify the victim. Investigators found no distinctive features on the woman and believed that the killer intentionally made her unidentifiable. Additionally, the woman’s thumbs had been removed. Since thumbprints are the primary prints collected for documents like driver’s licenses and passports, the lack of fingerprints made identification even more challenging.

Remarkably, the woman’s head has never been found.

However, there has been a recent breakthrough in the case. The remains have been identified as belonging to Ada Beth Kaplan, a 64-year-old individual from Canyon Country, according to officials from the coroner’s office.

After exhausting all leads, Kaplan was buried in Union Cemetery. In 2020, the coroner’s office collaborated with the nonprofit DNA Doe Project, which constructed a family tree based on a DNA profile. In July, two potential family members were identified and provided DNA samples for comparison, leading to Kaplan’s identification.

“Detectives from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office followed up on the investigation and interviewed family members, discovering that no missing person report had been filed for her,” officials stated.

Currently, the identity of the location where Kaplan was killed and the person responsible for her death remain unknown, according to coroner’s officials.

As of now, no additional information has been released. The Kern County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to Nexstar’s request for comment.