Woman Finds Bone of Missing Man She Knew as a Child: 'He Still Had His Whole Life Ahead of Him'

Mar. 15, 2025

Mark Charles Burleigh, whose leg bone was found in a California riverbank in July 2024.Photo:State of California Department of Justice

State of California Department of Justice

A California woman has found a bone belonging to a missing man who she happened to know as a child.

The tibia bone belonging to Mark Burleigh waslocated on July 6in the South Fork of the Eel River in the Redway area, according to news releases from theHumboldt County Sheriff’s Office(HCSO).

Kim Cabrera was the person who spotted Burleigh’s leg bone sticking out from the river bank, according toABC affiliate KRCR.

The woman told the station she was a teacher’s aide at the Myers Flat Community School in the late 1990s while Burleigh was a student there.

“It brought all these memories back of what he’d been like as a kid, and what a special kid he was and so it was a moment of grief and sadness, and I am still processing it,” Cabrera said. “It is still very sad to me that it turned out to be him.”

Cabrera remembered Burleigh as “an entertaining kid” who “was really energetic” and “just full of life.”

“He seemed like he had a good future ahead of him and he was super young,” Cabrera recalled. “He still had his whole life ahead of him at that time and he was just a good kid to work with.”

Burleigh had been released from jail shortly before he disappeared in October 2017, according to the sheriff’s office. He was reported missing four months later.

Seven years after Burleigh was last seen, Cabrera found one of his bones.

In July, authorities said the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office initially determined the bone was“unlikely to be human,“but anthropologists made the opposite determination.

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K-9s searched the site where Burleigh’s tibia was found, but nothing else was located, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Humboldt County Coroner’s Office and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

An investigation into Burleigh’s disappearance is ongoing.

source: people.com