Closure in Colusa?
Son hopes skeleton discovered in ditch in '82 is missing mom

The Sacramento Bee
By M.S. Enkoji - menkoji@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PST Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Where Interstate 5 slices through the brimming orchards and fields of Colusa County, a farm laborer came upon a grisly discovery on a fall day in 1982.

A skeleton with bits of clothing clinging to it partially protruded from a drainage ditch alongside an exit ramp.

Nothing among the remains offered any clues to who the body once was, or how the person died.

It was a woman – a woman with surgical plates in her leg. After a few months, with no leads to pursue, Colusa County named her Jane Doe, and then buried her in a local cemetery.

More than a quarter century later, the family of Nellie Cornman Flickinger believes Jane Doe is a mother of five who left her children with a promise on a spring day in 1979 and headed west.

As he waits for scientific testing, including DNA analysis, the prospect of a match is as startling as it is gratifying, said Michael Nelson, one of Flickinger's children.

"I can't sleep at all. It's terrfying. My whole past jumps up in front of me," said Nelson, who lives near Erie, Pa.

Nelson, now 38, was 10 the day his mother left him and his four siblings at the Erie home of their grandmother. His mother said she was going to California with a man, possibly a military man, to right her life and eventually send for her children.

No one in Flickinger's family ever heard from her again. But Nelson always wanted to.

"Every year, I think about her," he said. "Others in the family have said we should let it go. But I need to know where my mom is at. I need to know whether she's dead or alive."

Nelson and the rest of the family have keyed in on one possible similarity between the remains and Flickinger: Flickinger was in a motorcycle accident in the 1960s that left her with a plate and screws in her leg. The Jane Doe also had a plate and screws holding one of her legs together.

The body in the Jane Doe grave in Colusa will be exhumed, possibly within a month, according to the Colusa County Sheriff's Department. DNA from the body will be compared to samples from Flickinger's family, which will be done at state laboratories and could take a year.

After so many years, waiting possibly another year for definitive word is almost unbearable for Nelson.

"People say, you've gone this long, but that's not the point," he said. "Knowing a little bit is more tortuous than knowing nothing."

Nelson's cousin, Joni Lapeyrouse, who lives in Florida, helped launch the recent effort to find the aunt she never knew.

She had contacted the police in Erie and had Flickinger's profile posted last year on the Doe Network, a Web-based volunteer effort that provides a public clearinghouse of missing people and unidentified bodies.

Within a day, the Doe Network notified Lapeyrouse of a possible match: the Colusa County Jane Doe.

The county had originally tried DNA testing on some hair from the body, but the hair had degraded too much. Medical records on Flickinger's surgery have been destroyed.

The coroner's office had no estimate of how long the remains were in the ditch along the freeway just north of the town of Arbuckle. Nor were deputy coroners able to determine a cause of death.

In a county that can go several years without a murder, investigators believe this most likely was one.

"Someone would not end up there without help," said Colusa County Sheriff's Lt. Shane Maxey.

An orchard worker is still the only witness at the interchange where the remains were found, which is what makes the county appealing for discarding bodies that someone doesn't want found, Maxey said.

"She certainly wouldn't be the first to be dumped in our county," he said.

If investigators, including Erie Police Department authorities, get a name for the remains, the cold case could warm up again, Maxey said.

"We'd certainly like to give them some closure," he said of the family.

Nelson, who is the middle child, said his mother was the light in a dark family saga. She endured an abusive marriage and protected her children from the same, Nelson said.

"She's awesome," he said. "She did what she could."

She moved the family around, once living at a mobile home park in Yuma, Ariz., he said.

That is the most western location he can recall venturing with his family. His mother worked at a dime store and sometimes took her children to the dog races for an outing, Nelson said.

Flickinger would often leave her children and strike out on her own with earnest promises to rebuild her life. But she always came back, Nelson said.

That's why he was not alarmed as he played at his grandmother's house that day when his mother said she was leaving.

She introduced a man she said was going to take her to California. No one got his name. Nelson and the others, including the grandmother, who has since died, believe the man was in the military.

Nelson said all he could recall is the man was white, possibly in a uniform, appeared tall, and had hair that was slightly longer than military styles.

She was going to send for the children, once the time was right, she told them.

With no word from her, the children eventually went to foster homes, which Nelson said was no better than the first part of their lives.

The rough-hewn upbringing still plagues Nelson, who says it has kept him from being able to hold a job.

"I'd love to be able to work," he said. "I go in, I feel like everything is closing in on me.

"I've been at the bottom of the pool for a long time. Sometimes you get tired of swimming. I deal with it. It's taken a toll."