Forty-three years ago, San Joaquin County sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of a body floating near Blossom Road and Beaver Slough in the town of Thornton.
The body was badly decomposed, found wearing only white swim trunks with red and blue stripes and a tattoo on his left arm reading, “Black is Beautiful.” He had been shot in the shoulder.
Detectives didn’t have much to go on.
But the Sheriff’s Office reported this week it had cracked the case and now knows the man’s identity: Edward Donald Raymond, who would have been 78 today…