She has been without a name for more than 30 years.
Her body was found in the bushes along a pathway in Tilden Regional Park on
Saturday, Aug. 23, 1975. Most of her clothes had been removed, but a thin
chain of turquoise stones still hung around her neck.
"She had sustained blunt-force trauma to the head," said Detective Sgt. Dale
Davidson of the East Bay Regional Parks Police Department. "She was hit with
something very hard."
Detectives responded to the scene at 4:30 p.m. on that long-ago day and
commenced an investigation that, despite their best efforts, led nowhere.
"This was the mid-1970s -- a very interesting time," Davidson said. "The
freedom and hippie movement was still thriving, and there was a lot of this
type of thing going on with runaways and missing people."
The woman, who was described as white, 20 to 30 years old, 5 feet 3 inches
tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, had been dead for about four days when
a hiker discovered her.
She had been dumped in the bushes after being killed elsewhere,
investigators said.
By 1977, all leads had turned cold, Davidson said. The case is now
"inactive."
Most of what remains of her today is a folder of evidence in the Contra
Costa County Coroner's Office. In a manilaenvelope is her necklace and a
matching ring she was wearing.
In another envelope is a sketch, showing a woman with a slightly rounded
face and shoulder length hair.
She's just one of dozens of unidentified victims who remain nameless in the
files of Bay Area morgues. As with all their Doe cases, the Contra Costa
County Coroner's Office holds onto bone or tissue samples in the hopes a DNA
match can eventually be made.
Even before DNA testing became prevalent in the late 1990s, the morgue made
a habit of holding onto such evidence, officials said.
More than 2,500 bodies, the victims of violent crime and suspicious
circumstance, remain nameless entities in California, according to the
state's Department of Justice. Some date back to the 1960s.
At the Contra Costa County morgue in Martinez, Deputy Coroner Christopher
Forsyth is working to identify the remains of
25 people, including the 1975 Jane Doe murder victim.
One case, said Forsyth, dates back to 1973.
"Out there are families who don't know what happened to their loved ones,"
he said.
On top of a bookshelf in his office sits a row of colored binders. Each
binder represents one of the unidentified corpses his office is trying to
match with a name.
The morgue still has the remains of three of the 25 nameless individuals.
"I dread getting a John Doe," Forsyth said. "It involves a lot of work on
our part and can involve many different agencies in different jurisdictions.
In some of these cases, the victim isn't always a homicide -- and you don't
necessarily have loved ones always filing a missing persons report."
The morning Forsyth sat down to discuss his various Doe cases, the body of
an unidentified woman found hours earlier in Richmond was brought to the
morgue.
"She had no identification on her," Forsyth said. "We took a fingerprint
from her thumb and ran it through the state's automated fingerprint system
to see if there is a match. We got nothing."
Forsyth said all 10 of the woman's fingers will be printed and run through
the CAL-ID system. Law enforcement agencies will also be contacted to see if
the woman matches the description of any persons reported missing.
California boasts the grim distinction of having the highest number of
unidentified bodies -- 2,688 -- in the nation, according to officials. Texas
ranks a distant second with 587.
The routine of processing a body once it arrives at the morgue is the same
throughout California. Fingerprints are taken and run through CAL-ID, the
automated print system, in search of a match. Should that fail, the jaws and
teeth are charted for comparisons to dental records.
"This is not like CSI," Forsyth said, "where you find a hair at the scene,
run it through a computer and have an identity before the next commercial
break."
Michael Case manages the Missing Unidentified Persons Program at the state's
Justice Department. He said more than 150,000 people are reported missing
throughout the state each year.
"Many of these cases cycle in and out of our system in a day or two," he
said. "Sometimes they're runaways who return home to mom and dad. Most
return home safely -- but at any given point, we have 27,000 cases in our
system."
Case said state law is the reason behind California's high number of
unidentified dead.
"We have a very good mandate for reporting these cases in California," he
said, explaining a coroner has to report a body that cannot be identified to
state authorities. "There is no such mandate nationwide."
Placing a name with an unidentified body is a matter of cross referencing
information, Case said. White boards line his office walls on which
information pertaining to dozens of missing people is constantly scribbled
and updated.
Case said official estimates place the number of unidentified bodies and
remains lying in morgues and pauper's graves across the country at 40,000.
"It's a sad situation," he said. "You have families out there looking for
loved ones, hiring private detectives and paying a lot of money."
In San Joaquin County, the coroner is contending with 10 unidentified
victims dating back to the early 1970s.
"Three of the bodies are still in the morgue," said Supervising Deputy
Coroner Sgt. Bill Fellers. "We're getting ready to bury one who we've had
for a couple of years. It's time to put him to rest."
Fellers said the body is that of a young Hispanic man in his 20s, who was
struck and killed by a car as he walked across State Highway 4 in Stockton
at 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 25, 2004.
"We have some tattoos on him," Fellers said, saying fingerprint comparisons
and a search of dental records failed to find a match. "This guy just flew
under the radar for some reason."
Fellers said the unidentified are buried when it's determined no further
evidence can be extracted from the remains. San Joaquin County -- unlike
various other counties -- does not cremate its remains.
"If a next of kin ever steps forward, we hope they'll be able to claim a
body instead of a box of ashes," Fellers said. "It costs a little bit more
to do, but that's the way we do it."
The remains of two men killed sometime in the 1970s remain in the morgue,
Fellers said. They were discovered under a house in Stockton on Dec. 18,
2003.
"They're probably homicide victims," Fellers said, "murdered and buried
under a concrete slab."
Forensic anthropologists have determined the remains to be those of two
Hispanic men in their 30s or 40s, Fellers said. What is left of the bodies
were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where a forensic artist
reconstructed the faces.
"At this point, we're still trying to identify them," Fellers said.
In many cases, tissue is sent to the Missing Persons DNA Program at the
California Department of Justice. Started in 2001, the program seeks to
identify California's unidentified dead through DNA provided by family
members of missing persons.
The program has made 60 identifications to date, said Jeannine Willie, the
program's administrator.
"We're one of only three programs doing this sort of work," Willie said.
"The FBI is doing it and so is Texas. If we can't identify a body, we submit
our DNA sample to the FBI's national data bank."
Currently, the state's DNA database holds more than 700 samples from
unidentified bodies and more than 800 samples from families who are missing
a loved one.
"We're trying to get biological evidence for the more than 2,500
unidentified bodies in California," Willie said. "With DNA technology moving
so quickly, this is a new investigative tool that detectives and family
members can use."
Willie said putting a name to a body not only brings closure to a family, it
can help close cases that have long been cold.
"For every identification we make, we move closer to linking a suspect to a
crime or one crime to another," she said. "That's why it's important to make
an identification."
Families who are looking for missing loved ones can submit DNA samples to
the state's database through their local police department, Willie said.
"We would like to encourage these families to do this," Willie said. "All
they do is swab the lining of the mouth. It's completely voluntary."
The Internet has become a powerful tool in putting a name to the nameless.
Libba Phillips is a director with the Doe Network (www.doenetwork.org), an
all-volunteer, online organization that works with law enforcement agencies
across the country to identity John and Jane Does.
Using an extensive database, researchers at the Doe Network cross reference
details they receive from investigators regarding unidentified bodies with
information they have on file regarding missing persons.
"At any given time, we have 700 potential matches that are being compared in
the database," Phillips said. "In the years we've been doing this since
1999, we have -- with minimal resources and a lot of commitment -- solved
about 36 cases."
The Doe Network places an emphasis on cases that have turned cold, Phillips
said.
"The primary focus of our work are unidentified victims who have been found
in various states of decomposition," she said. "For us to accept a case, it
has to be older than nine years. We're looking to solve those cases that
have been sitting on a shelf somewhere for a long time."
Currently listed on the Doe Network's Web site are 86 John Doe cases and
roughly 70 Jane Doe cases from California, Phillips said, adding that's just
a small percentage of such cases in the state.
Phillips is passionate about her work. In March 1999, her sister went
missing -- but, unlike many who disappear, she was later found.
"Ultimately, she ended up being exploited," Phillips said. "But what I
learned in my search for are there are so many unidentified John and Jane
Does and so many missing people who don't make it."
The experience, Phillips said, left a lasting impression.
"We're committed to shining a light on this unidentified population," she
said. "How can somebody be unidentified? Before these people became John and
Jane Does, they had a name."
Staff writer Simon Read can be reached at (925) 416-4849, or
sread@angnewspapers.com.