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.
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American forensic scientist, genealogist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs Identifinders International, an investigative genetic genealogy consulting firm which helps identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings were a series of murders spanning from the early 1990s until 2011. Many of the victims' remains were found over a period of months in 2010 and 2011 during a police search of the area along Ocean Parkway, near the remote beach towns of Gilgo and Oak Beach in Suffolk County, New York. The search was prompted by the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, who, like many of the known victims, was a sex worker who advertised on Craigslist. The perpetrator in the case is known as the Long Island Serial Killer, the Manorville Butcher, or the Craigslist Ripper.
Dawn Olanick, previously known as Princess Doe, was an unidentified American teenage decedent from Bohemia, New York, who was found murdered in Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown Township, New Jersey on July 15, 1982. Her face had been bludgeoned beyond recognition. She was the first unidentified decedent to be entered in the National Crime Information Center. Olanick was publicly identified on the 40th anniversary of her discovery.
The Bear Brook murders are female American murder victims, two discovered in 1985 and two in 2000, at Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, United States. All four of the victims were either partially or completely skeletonized; they were believed to have died between 1977 and 1981.
Marcia Lenore Sossoman King was a 21-year-old Arkansas woman who was murdered in April 1981 and whose body was discovered in Troy, Ohio approximately 48 hours after her murder. Her body remained unidentified for almost 37 years before being identified via DNA analysis and genetic genealogy in April 2018. King was one of the first unidentified decedents to be identified via this method of forensic investigation.
Peggy Lynn Johnson, also known by the last name Schroeder, was an American woman whose body was discovered in 1999 in the town of Raymond, Racine County, Wisconsin. She was 23 years old at the time of her death, which had occurred after enduring several weeks of extreme neglect and physical abuse. New developments in the case emerged after her body was exhumed on October 16, 2013, including isotope analysis. In November 2019, authorities announced that after two decades she was finally identified. Both the victim's and the murderer's name were released on November 8, 2019. In March 2022, Linda La Roche was convicted of her murder. In May 2022, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Johnson's murder received national attention both preceding and following her identification.
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.
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.
Gwenn Marie Story was a 19-year-old American woman who was murdered in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 14, 1979. Her body remained unidentified for 44 years before being identified via DNA analysis and genetic genealogy in December 2023. Prior to her 2023 identification, Story was nicknamed "Sahara Sue" and "Jane Las Vegas Doe" because her body was found near the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, at the intersection of Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard. Developments indicated she may have used the name "Shawna" or "Shauna" when she was alive, though this proved unfounded.
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.
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.
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.
Mary Edith Silvani, known as "Sheep's Flat Jane Doe" and "Washoe County Jane Doe" while unidentified, was an American woman found shot to death near Lake Tahoe in Washoe County, Nevada in July 1982. She was unidentified for 37 years, the investigation becoming a cold case. The Washoe County Sheriff's Office announced her identity on May 7, 2019. Silvani was identified through DNA analysis and genetic genealogy with assistance from the DNA Doe Project and utilizing the public genealogy database GEDmatch.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
Elizabeth "Lisa" Ann Roberts, otherwise known as Precious Jane Doe, was an American homicide victim found near Everett, Washington on August 14, 1977, who was an unidentified decedent for 43 years until being identified on June 16, 2020. She had been picked up by a male driver while hitchhiking and killed after refusing sex. Her assailant had strangled her with a cord and then emptied his gun into her head, complicating identification. Roberts was a teen runaway who left her Oregon home in July 1977, less than a month before her murder. She was given the nickname "Precious Jane Doe" by Detective Jim Scharf, who began investigating the case in 2008. The detective was quoted as saying, "This young girl was precious to me because her moral decision from her proper upbringing cost her her life [...] I knew she had to be precious to her family too, so I had to find them. We needed to give her name back to her and return her remains to her family." Roberts was 17 at the time of her murder, though initial police estimations of her age were much older. Her body was found by blackberry pickers, and the medical examiner determined she had been dead for approximately 5 days before discovery. She was discovered fully clothed in a pastel tank top and denim cutoffs. As her identity remained unknown, Roberts' case was relegated as a cold case. In 2020, genetic testing via hair samples was used to locate her biological family, who led to her adoptive family.
