DNA used to identify California mother whose body was found 27 years ago

Amanda Deza's remains were found in canal in 1995 and remained unknown until daughter's DNA was used to identify them

On a spring day in 1995, a group of recyclers scavenging along a northern California canal made a grim discovery - the remains of a woman bound and gagged inside a partly submerged refrigerator.

Authorities believed the body, described as being that of a woman between 29 and 41 years old with strawberry blond hair, had been underwater for several months. For the next three decades, the case would stump homicide investigators in San Joaquin county, east of the San Francisco Bay Area, some of whom spent their entire careers trying to identify the woman.