Tammy Jo Alexander was an American teenage girl who was found murdered in the village of Caledonia, New York on November 10, 1979. She had been fatally shot twice and left in a field just off U.S. Route 20 near the Genesee River after running away from her home in Brooksville, Florida, earlier that year. For more than three decades, she remained unidentified under the names Caledonia Jane Doe or Cali Doe until January 26, 2015, when police in Livingston County, New York, announced her identity 35 years after her death.
James Paul Freund and Pamela Mae Buckley, commonly known as the Sumter County Does, Jock Doe and Jane Doe respectively, were two previously unidentified American murder victims found in Sumter County, South Carolina, on August 9, 1976. They had apparently traveled through various places in the United States before being murdered in South Carolina. This was inferred from some of their belongings.
Amy Marie Yeary was an American woman whose body was discovered on November 23, 2008, near Campbellsport, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Her body remained unidentified for 13 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy and dental records on November 23, 2021.
Sherri Ann Jarvis was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder, and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.
Vernon County Jane Doe is an American murder victim whose body was found on May 4, 1984. Her identity remains unknown. Her hands had been removed, likely to prevent identification by means of fingerprinting.
Tammy Corrine Terrell was an American murder victim from Roswell, New Mexico. Her body was discovered on October 5, 1980, in Henderson, Nevada, and remained unidentified until December 2021. Her case has been the subject of extensive efforts by investigators and has been highlighted as inspiring other work to solve cold cases of unidentified murder victims.
Dana Lynn Dodd was a formerly unidentified American murder victim whose body was found in 2006 in Kilgore, Texas. In 2013, investigators had hoped that a new reconstruction of the victim might uncover more leads. In August 2018, Joseph Wayne Burnette was indicted for her murder, following a confession, stating her name may have been "Ashley." The victim's case was later submitted to the DNA Doe Project, who made an identification in January 2019, 12 years later. While she remained unidentified, she was known by the nickname "Lavender Doe".
Perry County Jane Doe, also nicknamed "Girl with the Turquoise Jewelry" is an unidentified woman whose body was found on June 20, 1979, in Watts Township, Perry County, Pennsylvania, near the Juniata River. The cause of her death is not known, but it was considered to be suspicious by the authorities. Her name is still not known, despite efforts to identify her. She is the only unidentified decedent in the county.
Janice Marie Young was a formerly unidentified American girl who was pushed into the path of a moving vehicle on June 9, 1973.
Marilee Lee Bruszer, previously known as Juab County Jane Doe, was a formerly unidentified American murder victim who was found on September 3, 1978. Bruszer's body was not identified for 37 years due to an inaccurate physical description generated by the original investigators and the great distance she was found from where she had resided prior to her disappearance.
Unidentified decedent, or unidentified person, is a corpse of a person whose identity cannot be established by police and medical examiners. In many cases, it is several years before the identities of some UIDs are found, while in some cases, they are never identified. A UID may remain unidentified due to lack of evidence as well as absence of personal identification such as a driver's license. Where the remains have deteriorated or been mutilated to the point that the body is not easily recognized, a UID's face may be reconstructed to show what they had looked like before death. UIDs are often referred to by the placeholder names "John Doe" or "Jane Doe". In a database maintained by the Ontario Provincial Police, 371 unidentified decedents were found between 1964 and 2015.
The Redhead murders is the media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded females in the United States between October 1978 and 1992, believed to have been committed by an unidentified male serial killer. The murders believed to be related have occurred in states including Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The murders may have continued until 1992. The victims, many remaining unidentified for years, were usually women with reddish hair, whose bodies were abandoned along major highways in the United States. Officials believe that the women were likely hitchhiking or may have engaged in prostitution.
Michelle Angela Garvey was an American teenage girl murdered in Texas within a month of running away from her home in Connecticut. Her body was quickly found but remained unidentified until a 2014 DNA test, after an amateur Internet researcher suggested a match between the Texas unidentified decedent and Connecticut missing-person data.
The St. Louis Jane Doe is an unidentified girl who was found murdered in the basement of an abandoned apartment building on February 28, 1983 in St. Louis, Missouri. She has also been nicknamed "Hope", "Precious Hope", and the "Little Jane Doe." The victim was estimated to be between eight and eleven when she was murdered and is believed to have been killed via strangulation. She was raped and decapitated. The brutality of the crime has led to national attention.
Brenda Marie Gerow, previously known as Pima County Jane Doe, was a formerly unidentified American murder victim whose body was found on April 8, 1981. In late 2014, a photograph of a facial reconstruction of the victim was made public that led to Gerow's identification the next year. She had been buried under a headstone with the placeholder name of "Jane Doe" with the phrase "UNK – 1981". Gerow's body remained unidentified for 34 years until it was announced that her remains had positively been identified.
Deanna Lee Criswell was an American girl from Washington state who was murdered by firearm at age 16 and remained unidentified for 27 years. Criswell's body was found on November 25, 1987 in Marana, Arizona, near Tucson. The Marana Police Department announced her identification on February 11, 2015, aided by the sophisticated technology of forensic facial reconstruction and DNA analysis, and by websites set up by amateurs to help identify missing and unidentified persons.
Wilson Claude Chouest Jr. is an American murderer known for the murders of two women, one of whom remains unidentified, in the state of California, both occurring within days of each other in July 1980. He has a history of violence toward women, including abduction, robbery and rape, which occurred between 1977 and 1980. Chouest, who is currently serving a life sentence, was charged with three counts of murder, including that of one victim's unborn son. He was identified as a suspect in the case in 2012, after his DNA was matched to fingernail scrapings collected from both victims.
DNA Doe Project is an American nonprofit volunteer organization formed to identify unidentified deceased persons using forensic genealogy. Volunteers identify victims of automobile accidents, homicide, and unusual circumstances and persons who committed suicide under an alias. The group was founded in 2017 by Colleen M. Fitzpatrick and Margaret Press.
Linda Marie Pagano, formerly known as Strongsville Jane Doe, was an American murder victim from Akron, Ohio who was an unidentified decedent for 44 years. Following an argument with her stepfather on September 1, 1974, Pagano left her stepfather's apartment and was never seen again. On February 5, 1975, partial skeletal remains of a white female were found by three boys in a park in Strongsville, Ohio. After remaining unidentified, the bones were buried in an unmarked grave. Due to a clerical error, the bones were never entered into databases of unidentified decedents, and the case was largely forgotten about. In 2016, a college student doing genealogy research of her own family rediscovered the unidentified body. After posting about it online, the case gained the attention of Carl Koppelman, a forensic sketch artist. The new attention to the case led to a connection being made by the Akron police, and in June 2018 the remains were conclusively identified as Linda Pagano.
Shirley Ann Soosay, formerly known as Kern County Jane Doe, is a formerly unidentified decedent found in an almond orchard in Delano, California on 14 July 1980. A member of the Samson Cree Nation, Soosay grew up in Maskwacis, in Alberta. For most of her adult life, Soosay lived in Edmonton and then later Vancouver, though she remained in regular contact with her family until 1979, when cards from her stopped coming. The last time she had been seen in person by her family, Shirley had given indication that she might visit Seattle, and so beginning in 1980, Shirley's niece Violet Soosay-Wolf began to search Seattle and British Columbia for Shirley. On 14 July 1980, Soosay's body was found deep into an almond orchard in Delano. Soosay had been raped and stabbed 29 times before being dumped at the site. Local police investigation into the victim's identity included following leads from her autopsy and opening tip lines to the public, but local authorities were unable to make significant progress. In 2012, DNA analysis of another unidentified woman who was murdered in Ventura County, California several days after Soosay's murder showed the crimes to be committed by the same perpetrator. In 2018, though both victims remained unidentified, Wilson Chouest was convicted of both murders. In 2018, investigators from Kern County reached out to the DNA Doe Project (DDP) for assistance identifying their victim. In February 2020, DDP volunteers were unable to proceed genealogical investigation because of a lack of Indigenous DNA in DNA databases. The DDP made a Facebook post appealing for help, which was quickly seen by Violet Soosay-Wolf. Soosay-Wolf submitted her DNA for comparison, and in February 2020 Kern County Jane Doe was confirmed as Shirley Soosay. Soosay's case is held up as one of the earliest examples of unidentified Indigenous American remains to be identified through investigative genetic genealogy.
