John William Leras, a 17-year-old white male, was found dead at the water’s edge on the Sunset Beach stretch of Huntington Beach, Orange County, on January 4, 1975. He had been seen the evening before boarding a bus in Long Beach, reportedly headed to a skating rink with a new pair of roller skates.

His death emerged amid a widening multi-county investigation into a predator targeting boys and young men; the circumstances fit a pattern of young Caucasian males left near freeways or beaches. Attention later focused on Randy Steven Kraft, who was arrested in 1983 and convicted in 1989 for multiple murders, and some memorials and compilations identify Leras as one of Kraft’s early victims. Prosecutors did not include Leras’s homicide among the 16 counts tried in Orange County, and footprint evidence and other inconsistencies led authorities to consider whether Kraft sometimes had help.

Does anyone have information about Leras’s last known movements in Long Beach or observers who might recall seeing him the night he disappeared?