LOS ANGELES — Human remains discovered in a shallow grave in Angeles Forest yesterday were identified as those of legendary skateboarding pioneer Won-Ton “Animal” Chin, who had gone missing in 1987, law enforcement officials confirmed.
“I’m glad the skateboarding family can finally have some closure,” said skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, one of the original Bones Brigade members tasked with finding Chin. “We probably could have looked harder, but honestly, every place we looked had sick vert ramps or insane pools. I was just a young kid then — I honestly don’t know why law enforcement deputized me, or any of the other guys for that matter, to do their job. Animal was clearly murdered and the psycho that killed him could have killed us, too.”
Ultimately, Los Angeles detectives came to regret enlisting a group of teenage skaters in the official investigation.
“In hindsight, we realize we should’ve focused more on working with fellow officers familiar with missing persons cases,” said Lt. David Snead of the Los Angeles Police Department. “When we’d arrive at a drainage ditch to run a sweep, they’d start planning out lines and talk about how ‘stoked’ they were to be there: they never actually looked for a body. At one point, they left California to begin their search in Hawaii, with no real evidence that Mr. Chin had made the trip to the islands.”
The Bones Brigade was also criticized for not following proper investigation procedure.
“We’d hear accounts that Chin had been at a half-pipe and was blazing, just incredibly rad — but when we’d search for evidence, we’d discover the Bones Brigade had compromised the scene by ripping it so hard that we couldn’t find a usable fingerprint to save our lives,” according to lead investigator James Pelletier. “Plus, all the crime scene photography they did was through a super-sick fisheye lens… and while it looked hella rad, it was useless for our investigation.”
Officials admitted it was the second-biggest mistake they’d made working with skaters — the worst being the hiring of Jeremy Klein and Heath Kirchart to aid in the investigation of several fires they themselves had started.