In October 2023 the body of Bernardo Moreno, fifty-four, was found beside Interstate 5 near its interchange with State Route 905 in southern San Diego. He had been shot in the head, and his body had been set on fire. The California Highway Patrol's accounts date the killing to October 13 and the discovery to October 18. On December 5, 2024, Dwight William Rhone was arrested and charged with his murder.
A year later, in December 2025, Highway Patrol investigators and the FBI searched the backyard of a house on Newton Avenue in the Southcrest neighborhood of San Diego, acting on what they called developed information that remains were buried there. Rhone had once lived at the property as a tenant. Dozens of investigators spent three days on the site. Law enforcement sources told reporters at the time that multiple human remains had been found; officials later confirmed one set. The San Diego County District Attorney's Office named Rhone, then seventy-four and already in custody, as a person of interest. The remains were identified as those of Michael Brown. His age and the cause of his death have not been made public.
On June 10, 2026, after investigations involving the San Diego Police Department, the FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Highway Patrol, prosecutors charged Rhone with three more murders. Besides Michael Brown, they were two cold cases. Herierto Ruiz, as his name was released, was found strangled in December 1993 in an alley southeast of the interchange of Interstates 5 and 15. Ronald Johnken was found in September 2002 in Chollas Creek, northwest of the same interchange, dead of blunt-force trauma to the head. The charges carry a special-circumstance allegation of multiple murder, which on conviction means life without parole or, if prosecutors seek it, death. Rhone pleaded not guilty and was held without bail, not due back in court until March 2027.
"Our commitment to holding violent offenders accountable remains as strong today as it was on the day these crimes were committed," said District Attorney Summer Stephan.
Prosecutors said Rhone was also being investigated in connection with other people who had died or disappeared, and they asked for information about two. Danice Galloway, thirty-three, was found dead in an alley at 3700 Main Street on May 1, 1989, less than a mile from where Ruiz was found. Antenogenes Gomez Velasquez was last seen in 2021 and was last known to live at 3456 Newton Avenue, the street where Brown's remains were found. Rhone has not been charged in either case, and none of the four murder charges has been tried.