More than 40 years after mother's remains found, OC sheriff's investigators name persons of interest

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KABC) -- Homicide investigators with the Orange County Sheriff's Department have named two persons of interest Thursday, in a decades-old murder investigation after the remains of a mother were found in 1983, in what is now the city of Lake Forest.

Hearing one of two persons of interest in the murder of her mother is her very own father comes as no surprise for Dawn Hamill. Hamill spoke with Eyewitness News on Thursday, after sheriff's cold case investigators made the announcement.

"I believe he did it. He is an abusive man. He abused me. He abused my half-siblings," Hamill said.

Eyewitness News brought you the story of Maritza Glean Grimmett in 2024, after a DNA swab from her daughter revealed her identity.

Maritza's remains were found by a group of children in April 1983, in a culvert in what is now the city of Lake Forest.

More than four decades later, investigators with the OCSD named two persons of interest Thursday-Howard Grimmett, a former marine who married Maritza back in 1978, and Howard's current wife, Isabel Cruz who goes by the name "Terry.

The lead investigator, Bob Taft, said the couple was cooperating. Taft interviewed them back in September 2024, with Howard denying having any involvement with Maritza's homicide.

"However, the location where Maritza's remains were found were approximately three miles from El Toro Marine base where Howard was stationed. The problem that we have is-we have no definitive ties of how Maritza came to California," Taft said.

According to Taft, in the summer of 1979, Maritza told her family she was heading to California to reconcile with her husband who was then assigned to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Instead, investigators say Maritza didn't show to finalize her divorce with Howard in November 1979, in Tennessee. That following January, Howard married Cruz who was also a marine. Taft said she had just been discharged because she was pregnant.

"I know deep down in my heart he did it and I want him to pay," Hamill said.

If she were still alive, Maritza would be a grandmother of four children, and a great grandmother of two. Anyone with any information is asked to call the OCSD cold case homicide team at 714-647-7055.