33 years later, police are still looking for a suspect in teen's murder in Chula Vista

On a fall night in 1991, Clarissa Castro’s family saw her for the last time at their Spring Valley home before she mysteriously vanished.

“She was only 14,” Clarissa's older sister Celestina Ramirez said. “She was a little girl.”

Ramirez no longer lived at home but she remembers sensing something bad was coming.

“It was something in me that was drawing me to her,” Ramirez said.

On that day, Clarissa was hosting a party. Without her mother home and with three younger siblings inside, Ramirez couldn’t stay away. She visited her at least four times, with the last time being around midnight.

“She was sleeping,” Ramirez said. “So I mean, I figured that she was okay.”

Her feelings weren’t unfounded. Later that night, another sibling saw Clarissa get into a car and leave.

“She said that somebody came up,” Ramirez said. "She didn't know if she went in the car voluntarily or she was taken."

Ramirez tried to file a missing persons report but was unable to do so due to her young age. 

Two months later, a body would be found in the Otay Valley area of Chula Vista — but without a missing person’s report, the police were unaware of the connection between the cases.

“A young boy was going for a walk right up here in this area, and when he was coming through the area, just kind of walking by himself, he noticed what looked like a body,” Sgt. Anthony Molina, public information officer for the Chula Vista Police Department, said.

With her grandmother’s help, Clarissa’s sister filed a missing persons report with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department a month later. But it took two more years for police to connect the dots.

“The Department of Justice does something they call, ‘an audit on missing persons,’ and someone called the sheriff’s department and that brought the case back up on their end,” Molina said. “By that time, there was enough info out there that the deputy working was able to connect with the Chula Vista Police Department and say, ‘Hey, I think your missing person could be the body that we found.”

The case has been investigated and re-investigated multiple times with no success.

“And what we're hoping is that with some time that's passed, maybe people holding onto things are realizing there are things from their past that they need to let go,” Molina said.

Her family is also urging anyone with information to come forward.

“If anybody can give any kind of information, I know, it's been so long already, but I'm still hoping,” Ramirez said.

They’re desperate for closure after a decades-long search for answers.

If you have any information about Clarissa's death, you are asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 888-580-TIPS.