Volume 46 - No. 12
March 24, 2016
by lyle e davis
We’ve all been there, we who are parents.
Our child doesn’t come home . . .and the worry kicks in. It’s automatic. Kids are supposed to be home on time. If they’re not, surely something must be wrong.
We wait. And wait. One day goes by . . that’s too long. We call the police and file a missing persons report. More often than not, the youngster is found. They stayed over at a friend’s house and didn’t bother to call mom or dad. Or they decided to go fishing or camping . . . and didn’t check with mom and dad. Generally, they get a good, and welldeserved, chewing out by a couple of relieved parents.
But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Such was the case with J. P. Nellans, age 19. He disappeared in 1985.
31 years would pass by. 31 years filled with misery, loneliness, fear, desperation, you name the emotion . . . it was there for John and Gail Nellans, J. P.’s parents. Every day, week, month, year, was one of consistent, never absent agony.
Where could he be? What could have happened to him? Did he run off with a girl friend? Did he get in trouble with the law? Did he run away from home? And, if so, why?
Above, Dr. Glenn Wagner, Medical Examiner for San Diego County, shows skeletal remains. The sunbleached skull, left foreground on the table, was easily identified as a young male, probably Hispanic or Native American. Further study follows.
Below: The San Diego County Morgue: capacity, 500 bodies. On any given day, there is an average of 225 bodies awaiting examination, with 10 to 30 being processed per day
They needed to know.
Above, 19-year-old surfer, JP Nellans, missing for 31 years. He disappeared in 1985; thanks to DNA from his sister, his body was finally identified this year.
Thirty one years later they got the sad answer. Their beloved son, J.P., was dead. A body had been found
Officials from the Medical Examiner’s office came to their home with the sad news. A DNA sample that J.P.’s sister had given about 10 years ago was finally matched up with a body that had been found in a wooded area of Clairmont in 2000. John, the father, said, “it was not the closure we were looking for . . . but it was closure for our family. Something we had been hoping for ... for years.”
The Nellans family agreed to share their story in the hopes that other families would not have to go through what they had endured.
Back when J.P. had disappeared the DNA technology was not what it is today.
John P. Nellans: “Ours was a bit different reaction than if a child had gone missing for a
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day or two. JP was an older teenager. While we worried we didn’t panic as we would have had he been a small child or even a young teenager. We though perhaps he’d decided to take off cross-country. Perhaps on an adventure of some sort. We just didn’t know. We assumed he was with friends or neighbors. We actually waited a couple years. When we hadn’t heard from him in all that time we finally decided to file a missing persons report.
As time went on and on I had doubts as to whether we’d ever find him or not. Holidays came and went . . no JP. I shed more than a few tears.
It was several years later the Medical Examiner’s office invited us in for DNA test. JP’s mom and I gave DNA. They tested it agains a body that had been found in the back
country. The tests were inconclusive.
Then, in 2005 my daughter, Jennie Lee, who has since passed away went in to give a DNA test. That time it clicked and we had, at long last, found our missing son. The officials came out and confirmed they had matched the DNA with the body in the back country. This was sometime in February of this year. JP is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery. We plan to exhume his remains and re-bury him at our family plot at Glen Abbey in Bonita.
Looking back over the years, and even now, the pain never goes away; it dulls . . . you try to get on with your life . . . but then birthdays foll around, then Christmas, most any holiday . . and the pain returns. I haven’t cried so much in years.
They’re all gone now. JP, his sister, Jenny Lee. She passed away due to an asthma attack. They revived her . . . but she was brain dead. Another sad note, JP’s biological mom passed away a year and a half ago. She died never knowing that JP’s ramains had been found and identified. Today, John has remarried.
John is a former Navy Seal. His wife, Gail, is an artist. They have been married for seven years, living in El Cajon. They have both become good friends with the Forensic Artist PJ Puterbaugh. He and Gail are committed to assisting the Medical Examiner’s office in any way they can, as well as counseling families and/or individuals who have a need.
‘Giving the Dead . . . a Name’ Continued on Page 2