San Diego ? More than seven decades after the case horrified the city and triggered calls for a crackdown on “all known degenerates,” the Sheriff’s Department declared Thursday it has solved the mysterious death of 7-year-old Dalbert Aposhian.

When the boy’s mutilated body was found floating in San Diego Bay in July 1933, police concluded that he had been killed by a sex fiend. The coroner’s office made the same finding and newspapers for weeks had blood-curdling headlines about a maniacal killer on the loose.

But the “cold-case” unit of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, after asking the current medical examiner’s office to review detailed autopsy pictures, concluded that the boy accidentally drowned and his body was mutilated by marine life.

The boy’s 9-year-old companion had told the police that he had fallen into the bay, but his version was not widely believed. The boy’s parents are now dead.