Where’s Laura?

Mike and Patty Bradbury panicked when they heard their eight-year-old son Travis utter those words. The couple’s three-year-old daughter had disappeared on a family camping trip in southeastern California and there was no inkling of what had happened to her.  The chills soon emanated to fear as a search produced no clues to her whereabouts. As Laura Bradbury’s fate remained in limbo, the fear morphed into anger, frustration, and devastation.

Thirty-nine years later, the question of “Where’s Laura?” is only partially answered.

Laura Bradbury

Mike and Patty Bradbury resided in Huntington Beach, part of Los Angeles.

In addition to Travis and Laura, they were the parents of an infant daughter, Emily.

Patty and Mike Bradbury

On October 18, 1984, the Bradbury’s set up camp at Indian Cove Campground in the Joshua Tree National Park east of Los Angeles, near San Bernardino and Palm Springs.

Indian Cove Campground

Joshua Tree National Park

When Travis told his mom he needed to use the restroom, she told him to take Laura with him. Laura waited outside as her brother used the portable toilet.

When Travis exited, Laura was gone.

Travis Bradbury, Laura’s Brother

Travis returned to the campground, believing his mom or dad had taken Laura back there, but neither had.

Laura is Gone

The panicked Bradburys notified other campers and soon over two-hundred-fifty people were searching for Laura in the Joshua Tree National Park. A police bloodhound followed what appeared to be footprints from Laura’s flip-flops for two miles before losing the scent.

Having turned up no tangible trace of Laura, the searches were called off after three days.

Search Teams Assembled

The only suggestive lead was a bearded man who appeared to be in his fifties seen driving a metallic blue van out of Indian Cove Campground shortly before Laura vanished. A similar-looking man was seen twenty-three miles away at Burns Canyon several hours after Laura’s disappearance. Authorities believe the man was taking the back road to Big Bear Lake, eighteen miles from Burns Canyon.

Police issued BOLO’s (be on the lookout) for the man and the vehicle; neither was found.

A Composite Sketch of Laura’s Possible Abductor

In June 1985, eight months after Laura Bradbury’s abduction, thirty-six-year-old Cheryl Mixsell of Pasadena, California, picked up a young girl from a daycare center. A woman called police, believing the girl was Laura Bradbury; when questioned, Cheryl insisted the girl was her four-old daughter, Anela.

Police arrived at the daycare center and took Cheryl into custody because a check of her driver’s license showed a couple of outstanding traffic warrants. The real purpose for detaining her, however, was suspicion of kidnapping.

Cheryl was not released until Mike Bradbury came to the station and said the girl was not Laura. Even he was struck by how much Anela Mixsell resembled his daughter.

Anela Mixsell, the Laura Bradbury Look-Alike, and Her Mother, Cheryl

In March 1986, a year-and-a-half after Laura disappeared, hikers found a skull near the park’s west entrance, only five miles from the Bradbury’s campsite.

Initial DNA tests could only determine the remains were those of a child. Additional DNA testing done in 1990 concluded with 99.9% certainty the skull was that of Laura Bradbury. The rest of her remains have not been found.

Further DNA testing could not determine how Laura had died.

Only Laura’s Skull is Found

One investigator speculated Laura meandered away while Travis was using the restroom, became buried in the collapsing sand prevalent throughout the park, and that her skull was later dug out by coyotes. Others believe she was abducted and murdered.

Few clues have surfaced in the ensuing thirty-seven years suggesting what happened to her.

Was Laura Murdered?

It is interesting to note the unfortunate fate of several people who took part in the search for Laura Bradbury.

A Morongo Basin couple, forty-two-year-old Clifford “Bill” Leville and his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend, Toby Santangelo, told police they believed they knew who had killed Laura. A Los Angeles Times article states they said Laura’s killer was a drug dealer named “Alan.”

In 1985, the couple were found shot to death in the Joshua Tree National Forest, approximately seven miles from where Laura had vanished the year before; Bill Leville’s body was found on July 14, Toby Santangelo’s on August 3. Both were buried in shallow graves.

The man convicted of their murders is named Alan Stevens. Investigators say he was questioned after Laura’s disappearance and again after the murder of Leville and Santangelo, but nothing connected him to Laura’s case.

Also in 1985, Jim Nestor, who had also taken part in the search for Laura, vanished in the Joshua Tree National Park. In February 1988, his skull was found twenty miles from where Laura’s had been found; like Laura, his cause of death could not be determined.

I could not find pictures of Bill Leville or Toby Santangelo. Police say their murders and the death of Jim Nestor are all unrelated to the death of Laura Bradbury.

Jim Nestor

Private investigator Jim Schalow, however, is mentioned in several Los Angeles Times articles from the 1980s saying he believes the cases are related, along with the murder of Sylvia Mangos.

The eight-year-old girl disappeared on March 27, 1988, while at the Yucca Valley Swap Meet with her parents. Her body was found in the desert one week later. She had been killed from blunt force trauma to her head.

Sylvia’s murder is also unsolved.

Sylvia Mangos

The area where the victims were found has been dubbed “The Morongo Triangle,” a takeoff on the famed Bermuda Triangle.

Map from the Los Angeles Times

Patty Bradbury died of cancer at age fifty-four in 2001.

Mike said her last words were, “I’m going to see Laura.”

Laura And Patty

In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mike Bradbury said he was recently shown images of what investigators said was Laura’s skull. He believed it a much larger skull than the one he and his wife were shown shortly after it was discovered in 1986.

Mike also said he had a report on tests showing inconclusive results on whether the skull’s cranium was his daughter’s. According to the report, only one of four DNA tests performed on the skull matched DNA samples from Patty Bradbury’s blood. Mike also stated that hair taken from Laura’s hairbrush did not match DNA found on the skull.

The two partial skull bones are the only remains Mike is aware of that are believed to be from his daughter.

Mike Bradbury, with son Travis and Daughter Emily

Emily Has No Memory of Laura

Laura Ann Bradbury was last seen on October 17, 1984, at the Indian Cove Campground in the Joshua Tree National Park east of Los Angeles. Authorities are nearly 100% certain they have recovered her skull, but the rest of her remains have not been found.

If you have any information regarding the death of Laura Bradbury, please contact the Los Angeles County, California Sheriff’s Office at (800) 698-8255.

Answers Elude

Ricky Schroeder, star of the sitcom  Silver Spoons at the time of Laura’s disappearance, took part in a national tour publicizing Laura’s disappearance.

The actor is a distant relative of Patty Bradbury.

 

 

Patti Bradbury with Ricky Schroeder

The disappearance of Laura Bradbury was one of the cases profiled on the first of three NBC television specials called Missing . . . Have You Seen this Person?  The inaugural episode initially aired on April 29, 1985; the other two shows aired in January and April 1986. They were hosted by then husband-and-wife David and Meredith Birney.

Missing . . . Have You Seen this Person?  was produced by John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn-Meurer. The specials garnered good ratings and led to what ultimately became their popular show Unsolved Mysteries.

Meredith and David Birney

 

Hosts of Missing . . . Have You Seen this Person?  

Laura Bradbury was also one of the first missing children to be featured on a milk carton.

One of the First Faces on the Milk Carton

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/59934069/laura-ann-bradbury

SOURCES:

• Los Angeles Community Policing
• Los Angeles Times
• PressReader. Com
• strangeoutdoors. com