A mystery named Jane Doe

Erie Times-News (PA) - January 25, 2008
Author: CODY SWITZER; cody.switzer@times.news.com

Family hopes for clues in 1979 disappearance

The skeletal remains of Jane Doe were found Oct. 7, 1982, in Colusa County, Calif., northwest of Sacramento.

More than 25 years later, an Erie County family is waiting for DNA test results that could tell them if Jane Doe is their sister, aunt and mother -- a woman they knew as Nellie Florence Cornman Flickinger.

Flickinger left her children with her mother in Erie in March 1979 and said she was going to California to get her life in order, her family said.

She hasn't been heard from since.

"It's stuck on everyone's mind, at family gatherings and reunions," said Flickinger's brother, Perry Cornman, 60, of Union City. "'Whatever happened to Sis?'"

Flickinger, who was 30 at the time of her disappearance, left her five children -- two sons and three daughters -- with her mother, Cora Henry.

She told Henry she was going to California to sort things out and left with an unknown man, according to her file on the Doe Network , an online database of missing and unidentified people.

Flickinger's children lived with Henry for a time before they were adopted by another family, Cornman said. He said they still maintained a relationship with their biological family, but did not wish to be interviewed for this article.

Joni Lapeyrouse, 35, of Pensacola, Fla., Cornman's daughter and Flickinger's niece, took up the family's search in recent years and filed a missing person's report with Erie police last summer.

Flickinger was an adult and left Erie willingly, so her family was never able to file a missing person's report until recently, Lapeyrouse said.

Lapeyrouse also posted Flickinger's information on the Doe Network last summer.

Within 24 hours of the posting, the family learned of the unidentified woman police in California called Jane Doe.

She wore a red, white and blue blouse, corduroy pants, and brown lace and leather shoes. Around her neck was a silver pendant with Hebrew writing; on her finger was a silver ring; and on her face, gold-framed sunglasses.

No one knows how she died, but foul play is suspected, police said.

She's about the same height and age as Flickinger, but also shares a much more telling characteristic -- a metal plate screwed onto the bone of her left leg. Flickinger, according to her file on the Doe Network , had a plate installed in her leg after a motorcycle accident.

A possible homicide

Both Cornman and one of Flickinger's daughters donated DNA to compare with Jane Doe's, after her body is exhumed.

Depending on the results of those tests, the investigation could change, said Cpl. Jon DiBello, who is handling the case for the Erie police.

"Right now it's a missing person," Dibello said. "Depending on the remains they have in California, if that ends up matching, then obviously California will have a homicide."

The investigator working on the case with the Colusa County Sheriff's Department could not be reached for comment.

The family isn't ruling out that Flickinger may still be alive.

Lapeyrouse told the family's story to the Yuma Sun, in Yuma, Ariz., in hopes that someone there may know something. Their story was published Tuesday.

Flickinger had gone to Yuma after marital problems with her husband, Lapeyrouse said. The family believes she could have moved there again when she left Erie in 1979.

Flickinger could have run away without wanting to be found -- a possibility investigators raised at the start of the search. Lapeyrouse and Cornman said they could accept that outcome, as long as they know Flickinger is safe.

"It she wants to live her life, that's fine. We just want to know that she's OK," Lapeyrouse said. "We want her to know that she's loved and she can come back any time she wants."

A mother's quest

Cornman believes it's much more likely his sister has died.

"We don't know what to think," he said. "I don't think because she left us she didn't like us. As far as I know, she left on good ground to get her life together."

The day Flickinger headed out of Erie, Cora Henry, her mother, didn't get the name of the man with whom she left. Henry trusted Flickinger would return, Cornman said.

"She thought I was crazy that I thought we had to trace her down," Cornman said.

After years passed and Flickinger didn't contact the family, Henry tried to find her daughter through the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. She resigned herself to believing her daughter had died.

Henry died June 12, 2004. She was 75.

"My mother used to say, 'She must be dead or she would have come back,'" Cornman said. "She went to her death thinking that Sis was dead, because she couldn't imagine her not coming back or contacting anyone if she was able."

Cornman is now waiting to see whether his mother was right.

CODY SWITZER can be reached at 870-1776 or by e-mail.