She Vanished Decades Ago. Then Her Skeletal Remains Were Mailed to Police — and Now She's Been ID'd

California authorities received the missing person report on August 3, 1987.

Nickolas Medin reported that he had gone on a business trip and his 48-year-old wife Kay Josephine Medin was missing when he returned to their Hyampom home.

The Trinity County Sheriff’s Office searched the property and the surrounding woods and area but there were no signs of the elementary school teacher.

Friends and family were interviewed but no significant clues emerged.

“She never showed up at school,” Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office cold case investigator Mike Fridley, who is investigating the case, tells PEOPLE. “They checked, they contacted her school, and they said that she seemed to be in good spirits and happy and she didn’t have any medical issues or anything. So that’s what obviously made everybody wonder what the heck happened. Her stuff is still at the house. Her car’s there. She just disappeared.”

Her disappearance from the rural Northern California community was deemed suspicious.

Then, on November 25, 1987, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office received a gruesome package in the mail. The box contained skeletal remains and an anonymous letter with a “map leading to a location of more remains,” says Fridley.

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The map gave directions to a location near Ammon Ridge Road in Eastern Humboldt County. “It’s very straightforward and generic,” he says about the letter.

There, detectives found more remains and were able to positively identify them to Kay using dental records.

The remains were not buried.

A death certificate was issued for Kay the following year in 1988.

Who may have written the letter is still considered a mystery. “It could go either way,” says Fridley. “It could have just been somebody that was deer hunting or didn’t want to get involved or could be the killer. Who knows.”

The case took another twist on Feb. 16, 1993, when the Fortuna Police Department contacted the Humboldt County deputies with yet another gruesome discovery. This time, a partial skull was found on the beach near Trinidad Head, about 150 miles away from where Kay’s earlier remains were discovered.

However, a DNA sample was taken and entered in the California Missing Person DNA Database and the National Unidentified Person DNA index but there was no match.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office received Community Project Funding from Congressman Jared Huffman’s Office to clear the backlog of unidentified human remains cases and sent the partial skull found on the beach to the private forensic lab Othram Inc. for genetic genealogy testing.

Othram later determined that the skull likely belonged to Kay in Sept. 2024.

Investigators spoke to Kay’s daughter and obtained a DNA sample from her. In early May 2025, the California Department of Justice confirmed the skull belonged to Kay.

Now, says Fridley, he is hoping someone comes forward with information to help him solve the case.

“I’m just looking for somebody that might have information that could help with the case,” he says. “That maybe somebody has some information that could get this case going again. And you know, a lot of times as time goes by people might come forward and talk to us that were reluctant to do that back then.”

Nickolas Medin died in August 2018, he says. 

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at 707-441-3024.