GILROY
– A kayaker found a dead man floating in the water of Anderson
Reservoir, east of Morgan Hill, according to the county sheriff’s
department.
By PETER CROWLEY and LORI STUENKEL
Staff Writers
GILROY – A kayaker found a dead man floating in the water of Anderson Reservoir, east of Morgan Hill, according to the county sheriff’s department.
Sheriff’s detectives think the body may be Jose Campusano, a 41-year-old Gilroy resident who disappeared on Dec. 13. The deputy at the discovery scene Saturday said the man appeared to match Campusano’s description.
“(The deputy) said his face was distorted. But he said he was 99 percent sure it was Jose,” sheriff’s department spokesman Officer Terrance Helm said Wednesday morning.
Nevertheless, coroner’s medical examiners and sheriff’s detectives have yet to positively identify the dead man. Medical examiners were waiting on lab results that could identify him and did not know when these would be available. Medical examiners would not say what method of identification they were using; they sometimes use dental or fingerprint records or DNA.
Medical examiners have completed an autopsy and know what caused the man’s death. But they are keeping this information confidential until they identify the dead man and contact his next of kin, if any. Deputies found no visible signs of trauma that could indicate he was attacked before he fell in the water, according to Helm.
Coroner’s staff said they contacted Campusano’s girlfriend, Gloria Garfias, who had lived with Campusano in an east Gilroy apartment for more than a year. Garfias, 37, and Campusano met in 1995 and began dating in August 2002. They moved in together, along with three of her sons, two months later.
Campusano also has a cousin in Gilroy, according to Garfias. The rest of his family lives in Mexico, where he was born.
The adult male kayaker found the body toward the west side of Packwood Cove, in Anderson Reservoir. A coroner’s official said this is near Anderson Dam, which feeds from the reservoir into Coyote Creek. Rangers and a deputy arrived at the kayaker’s tip and found the body floating face-down, wearing brown work boots, black pants and a dark-colored sweatshirt.
On Dec. 14, the day after Campusano disappeared, sheriff’s deputies found his Cadillac sedan in a parking lot at Anderson Lake County Park.
Dec. 13 began like any normal Saturday, Garfias said in an interview with the Dispatch on Jan. 5. The family got up, went to church and returned home. At about 11 a.m., Campusano told Garfias he was going out to visit a mechanic friend of his. He told Garfias that if he didn’t return home by 11:30 a.m., she should pick up her son Salvador from church.
That was the last Garfias saw or heard from the man who used to call her “mi’ja,” a term of endearment.
“He was just a really nice guy,” said Garfias, a native of Mexico who speaks no English. “He said nice things all the time, like … ‘I love you a lot.’ ”
It didn’t take long for her to know that something was amiss. Her boyfriend did not make a habit of hanging out with his few friends for long periods of time and had never stayed away all night.
Campusano never made it to his friend’s shop that Saturday, nor did he show up at work. Campusano often started his shift for the maintenance department at Eagle Ridge Golf Club in the afternoon, working until 11 p.m. or midnight, but he always came directly home.
“He never failed, never failed to come home,” Garfias said. “If I was here, then he was here in the house.”
She reported him missing that night. Although Campusano had not said he was going to Anderson Lake County Park, Garfias thought it was a place to look because he had hiked there once during the previous week. Often during last summer, Campusano took Garfias and her sons to Anderson to hike or have picnics. At about 12:30 p.m. the day after Campusano went missing, sheriff’s deputies found his car, a gray two-door Cadillac, in a parking lot at the park.
A search of the wooded area conducted by a sheriff’s search-and-rescue team with tracking dogs yielded no results. On Monday, Dec. 15, two days after Campusano’s disappearance, a dive team searched Anderson Reservoir but did not recover a body.
“I was imagining so many things” when they searched the reservoir, said Garfias, who refused to comment for this story. “I didn’t know what he did or – I don’t know.
“I’m just hoping he didn’t do anything to himself or hurt himself. I feel very lonely every day.”
