06/01/2019
32 YEARS June 1, 2019!.NEW INFORMATION! CAN SOCIAL MEDIA FIND HER FAMILY? KNOX COUNTY JANE DOE CAME FROM ONE OF TEN STATES - PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, OHIO, MICHIGAN, INDIANA, ILLINOIS, MINNESOTA, MARYLAND, VIRGINIA & WEST VIRGINIA. In 2013 officer Amy Dobbs sent her teeth to be tested by the Smithsonian Institute, they had found she came from one of 13 states; Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida. As new testing methods are developed, the Smithsonian re-evaluated the previous testing results and adjusted the states to a more Northern focus in 2014. PLEASE DISREGARD THE OLD RESULTS AS THEY ARE NOT ACCURATE.
The victim who carried no identification, was killed around 2:30 am June 1, 1987 by a 12-gauge shotgun at Jim Sterchi Road in North Knox County, TN. At the time, authorities speculated that the unidentified woman and two male accomplices were attempting to trick and rob a 23 year old, female resident by faking a fight outside her front door. The woman kicked the door, awakening the resident and a visitor. The resident called police and fired one shot from a shotgun when the woman attempted to open a screen door. The resident had been robbed before, so she was very scared.
Jane was in her mid-20s, just under 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds. She had brown hair, brown eyes. She wore an aqua-colored Miami Dolphins jersey number 32 that was given to her by one of the guys she was with, light blue pants, tennis shoes and white socks. There was a silver-colored chain bracelet on her left wrist.
She was missing a lower front tooth. Prior injures, according to the autopsy, suggest normal medical issues or accidents, but not abuse, She had a crushed vertebrae that likely caused her back pain; healed fractures of the clavicle and right and left tibia bones, with the left tibia secured by a metal pin; a healed fracture of the fibula, secured by a metal plate manufactured by "Synthes." A horizontal scar on her abdomen suggests pelvic surgery of some sort, possibly an emergency Caesarean section. Her autopsy states that she still had her uterus & ovaries so it was not a hysterectomy.
"She's somebody's daughter, and she may be somebody's sister or maybe even somebody's mother," "We would like to get her identified and maybe give closure to a family."
Facts about "Jane"
- Her hair color on the recon is apparently very accurate as to her hair color in real life.
- Ears were not pierced
- Tattoo - initial’s “B.H.” on the upper left arm approximately 2cm in width, 1 cm in height. Home made
alcohol level 1.3
Leg injury- It is indicated it occurred around 1985-1986 based off what the Synthes company told someone that called
synthes plate: The number on the plate was a lot number and the maker Synthes didn’t keep track of where the plates were distributed once they were made and shipped. It is indicated that the leg injury occurred around 1985-1986 based off what the maker of the “rod and screw” told an advocate.
The silver colored chain bracelet on her right wrist was what would be described as round loop links. It was the only piece of jewelry that she had on. Photo available on her NamUs profile.
Name- The only clue the men offered to Jane Doe's identity, was that "Tina" and "Illinois" came up during their conversations. "But we don't know the context of that, if it means she was Tina from Illinois, or she was going to Illinois to see a Tina, or something else"
Her shoes were quite old and worn which is what the men indicated to the police when interviewed which is why they gave her the Dolphins jersey.
NamUS https://identifyus.org/cases/1567
Case Report - NamUs UP # 1567 https://identifyus.org/cases/full_report/1567
The Doe Network: 607UFTN http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/607uftn.html
Autopsy Report Direct Link -Looks like partialhttp://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/2009/112909autopsyweb01.pdf
FBI VICAP ALERT - https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/unidentified-persons/jane-doe-35/view
Knox County Sheriff Cold Cases 1987 Unidentified White Female - http://www.knoxsheriff.org/coldcase/unidentified_white_female.php
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NEWS ARTICLES -
Knox County Sheriff’s Department tries to solve cold case - POSTED: 5:58 PM Jun 05 2013
"The Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit in Knoxville, Tenn. is requesting the media’s assistance in helping disseminate the following information to their viewers in the hopes that identification will be made of an unidentified white female who was shot and killed June 1, 1987. It is important that the media help in these types of cases as it is often the only way that a case will find answers. As an adult, it is not a crime to go missing. Unfortunately, with these types of cases often a report is never taken or the report gets misplaced. As time passes, the report may not continue to be validated in NCIC (National Criminal Information Center) allowing for the information to be removed from the system or the report gets filed away without another thought. These cases will have little chance of ever being resolved and a family will continue to go without answers. The outreach that the media has is crucial to finding resolution on many if not all of these types of “Cold Cases.”
Due to the Media’s coverage we recently had success in identifying another long term unidentified male victim from 1982. Unfortunately, with his case a missing persons report was taken but then filed away and forgotten. Because he was never entered into NCIC a hit between the 2 cases was never made. Unless we are able to promote “Jane Doe” on a national level our attempts to identify her will fail.
In a Knox County case from 1987, a woman believed to be in her 20s was picked up by some truckers at the truck stop on I-81 in Bulls Gap, TN. She was then taken to a party at a home on Stanley Road where she was shot and killed later that night. While the people behind her death did go to court, the victim herself has never been identified. The woman had a few unique traits, including the initials "BH" tattooed on her upper left arm, a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a c-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of 3 labs in the United States that is able to perform this type of testing to narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child. The Smithsonian Institution Lab is called the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Lab and is located in Suitland, Maryland. The testing was done on a tooth sample and analyzed for stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen values in dentin and enamel which represent isotope values incorporated during adolescence. Teeth of the unidentified white female were taken and broken down to study the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel. The enamel on teeth develops until approximately the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up. It is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that we breathe. The hope is that the public will see the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as a child in the region provided by the testing.
The tests that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. conducted on the unidentified woman show that she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If anyone has any information regarding the unidentified white female, please contact Detective Amy Dobbs with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit @ 865-215-3705.
Seen above are digital images of what the woman might have looked like as a teenager and around the time she was killed.
http://www.wcyb.com/news/knox-county-sheriffs-department-tries-to-solve-cold-case/20440244
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Knox County Sheriff's office needs your help solving a cold case - Posted: Jun 04, 2013 11:42 AM EDT Updated: Jun 04, 2013 11:42 AM EDT
Knox County Sheriff's Office needs your help in solving a cold case of an unidentified woman who was shot and killed June 1, 1987. She is believed to have been in her twenties at the time of her death.
The unidentified woman was picked up by some truckers at the truck stop on I-81 in Bulls Gap, TN. She was then taken to a party at a home on Stanley Road where she was shot and killed later that night. While the people behind her death did go to court, the victim herself has never been identified. The woman had a few unique traits, including the initials "BH" tattooed on her upper left arm, a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a c-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
JANE DOE SPECIFICS:http://content.foxtvmedia.com/whbq/JaneDoe.pdf
The Knox County Sheriff's Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of the three labs in the United States that is able to perform this type of testing to narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child. The Smithsonian Institution Lab is called the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Lab and is located in Suitland, Maryland. The testing was done on a tooth sample and analyzed for stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen values in dentin and enamel which represent isotope values incorporated during adolescence. Teeth of the unidentified white female were taken and broken down to study the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel. The enamel on teeth develops until approximately the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up. It is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that we breathe. The hope is that the public will see the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as a child in the region provided by the testing.
The tests that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. conducted on the unidentified woman show that she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If anyone has any information regarding the unidentified white female, please contact Detective Amy Dobbs with the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit @ 865-215-3705.
Detective Amy Dobbs, Knox County Sheriff's Office, Cold Case Unit provided the information.
http://www.fox13memphis.com/story/22497939/knox-county-sheriffs-office-needs-your-help-solving-a-cold-case
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Knoxville Investigators Ask For Public’s Help To Solve Cold Case - by Claire Aiello - Posted 4:46 pm, May 23, 2013
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WHNT) – The Knox County, Tenn. Sheriff’s Office is hoping the public can help them identify a ‘Jane Doe.’ The woman was murdered in 1987 and they’ve never been able to determine who she was.
Investigators provided two sketches of what they believe the woman may have looked like in her teens, around age 15 or 16, and between age 20 and 30, when she was murdered.
The woman was shot to death on June 1, 1987. Investigators say she was picked up by truckers at a truck stop in Bulls Gap, Tennessee, and taken to a party where she was shot and killed.
The people behind her death went to court, but investigators have never been able to determine the woman’s name.
She had the initials ‘BH’ tattooed on her upper left arm and a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a C-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of three labs in the United States that is able to perform specialized testing that can narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child.
Experts analyzed a tooth sample from the unidentified woman and determined she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If you have any information on who the woman might be, please call the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit in Tennessee at (865) 215-3705.
http://whnt.com/2013/05/23/knoxville-investigators-ask-for-publics-help-to-solve-cold-case/
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Jane Doe came from 1 of the 13 southeastern U.S. states - By Lauren Davis - Posted: Wed 5:17 PM, Feb 20, 2013 - Updated: Wed 6:39 PM, Feb 20, 2013
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT)--Investigators are one step closer to solving a murder case from more than two decades ago. We recently told you about forensic testing on a woman found murdered in Knox County. Amy Dobbs has been tirelessly working this case for 2 years and what she found is bringer her closer than ever to identifying the mystery woman.
There's a picture of Jane Doe showing what investigators think she looked like when she was murdered in 1987 in Knox County. Now there are two new photos showing the mystery murder victim at age 14 with two different hairstyles. Amy Dobbs says, "I hope we still have a lot of family alive to identify her."
Identifying her is difficult, but now there's more evidence than ever to help put a name with the face. The Smithsonian Institute, tested her teeth and narrowed down the region where she grew up. Investigators say she was raised in the central and southeastern US in one of 13 states including Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida. Dobbs says, "She could have come in from Canada we just didn't know. Now we know she came from one of the 13 states."
Jim Sterchi Road is where the woman took her last breath. Two men picked her up at a rest stop and brought her to the Jim Sterchi area to commit a home robbery, but the homeowner shot through the front door killing Jane Doe."
Neighbors found her body, but no one ever identified her. Now Amy plans on notifying all 13 states to try and get some answers.
Dobbs says, "We've got a lot to work with now and a lot of work needs to be done."
Jane Doe had a fractured collar bone, two fractured ankles and a fractured back. She also had a tattoo on her upper left arm. It was the letters "B.H.".
There is also a John Doe whose teeth were tested at the Smithsonian Institute. The media attention from that case has brought forward some great leads.
We'll keep you posted on both cases.
http://www.local8now.com/home/headlines/Jane-Doe-came-from-1-of-the-13-southeastern-US-states-192126931.html
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Smithsonian Institution to help Knox County with unsolved killings - By Kevin Connelly - Posted February 12, 2013 at 4 a.m.
Thanks to new testing available at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Knox County Sheriff's Office authorities hope they are one step closer to identifying two homicide victims from years ago.
The teeth of an unidentified victim from 1982 and a 1987 Jane Doe have been sent to a laboratory for what is known as stable isotopes analysis, with the hope of determining the geographic region in which they grew up.
When forensic officer Amy Dobbs of the Sheriff's Office was put in charge of department cold cases nearly two years ago, the killing investigations were both at a stand-still. After reading about how stable isotope testing can eliminate up to 80 or 90 percent of the world when finding where somebody spent their childhood years, Dobbs decided to make her best sales pitch to the Smithsonian, one of only three testing sites in the country.
Her first contact with them was in late December, with the expectation that she wouldn't hear back any time soon. But it was just days later, she said, that they responded with a decision to extend their services and aid in the investigation.
"I'm really excited that they have picked up our two cases to help us," Dobbs said. "It may or may not lead to identifications of both of them, but just the fact that it's a new lead that we have to go down is pretty amazing to me."
She wasted no time sending the necessary teeth to Dr. Christine France, who manages the Smithsonian's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory.
Dobbs is hoping to have an answer by the end of this month, assuming there are no glitches in the process.
"We are looking at the chemical components in the teeth that are directly transferred from ingested water and attempting to match the teeth to an area with drinking water of a similar chemical signature," France explained. "The accuracy will be limited to a general area, such as the (U.S.) Southeast or Canadian Rocky Mountain region."
Admittedly, France realizes those areas are quite large to conduct a search. However, she said that was just one element of KCSO's investigation.
Once analysis is complete, Dobbs plans to distribute facial regression pictures created by a laboratory at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge to the media and law enforcement in the pinpointed areas of origin. Her hope is that someone will recognize the images as resembling a childhood friend or possibly even a family member, in which case a DNA test would be performed to make a positive identification.
"You still have victims. You still have a victim's family, so somebody out there has to be missing them. They don't forget," she said. "It doesn't get any easier for them and they continue to search."
The technology used in stable isotope testing is fairly new to the United States, but France has seen it yield successful results over the last 10 years in other labs around the world. Her experience with it has been strictly for archaeological research to this point, but said she's looking forward to the opportunity to apply it to a modern case and help people in a practical way.
"I have applied this technique to hundreds of specimens with a fairly good success rate," France said. "Modern humans tend to have a more global diet, which does interfere somewhat with the chemical signatures of a local region. But my research and the work of others suggests the technique is still useful for identifying general area of origin in people today."
As an advocate for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Dobbs realizes the potential this could have on future cases.
"Who knows? If it does work it's going to open the doors for other long-term unidentified cases," she said. "These people were born with a name and we ought to be able to have the dignity to bury them with a name."
Renderings show one of two cold case murder victims that the Knox County Sheriff's Office hopes to identify with high-tech help from the Smithsonian Institution. A tooth from the young woman who was shot to death in 1987 will be given a stable isotope test to determine the area of the country where she was raised.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/feb/12/smithsonian-institution-to-help-knox-county-with/
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Smithsonian Institution trying to help solve Knox Co. cold cases - by WBIR Web Staff - Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, 1:15pm -
New technology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. could help Knox County detectives identify two people who were shot to death years ago, but were never identified.
The first victim is a white woman who was shot in
the head and found on June 1, 1987, outside a house on Jim Sterchi Road.
Two men had picked her up at a rest stop near Bulls Gap. She was taken to the house for what was believed to be a
robbery, and was shot by the homeowner. The two men said they didn't know her name.
She was 20-25 years old, 5'5", and weighed between 100-120
pounds. She had brown eyes and brown hair, and was wearing an aqua-colored
Miami Dolphins football jersey, light blue pants, and a silver link type
bracelet. The initials "B.H." were tattooed on her upper left arm. She
had a scar on her abdomen, possibly from a cesarean birth or
hysterectomy. Skeletal analysis revealed several healed fractures and
other previous injuries consistent with a car accident.
The second
unidentified victim is a black male who was shot to death in 1981. His body was found on January 12, 1982 in a
wooded lot near Clear Springs Road and Mascot Road. He was approximately
30-40 years old and 5'10", wearing a blue pullover shirt with a half
zipper, black colored pants, size 9D black boots with zippers, and red
and white socks at the time of death.
The testing, which will be done at the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, will help narrow the region where the unidentified persons grew up. Once a region has been determined, age-regression pictures will then be released to the media and law enforcement agencies, in hopes someone will remember or recognize them.
This is the first time that the Knox County Sheriff's Office has been able to utilize this cutting edge technology. the work will be done free of charge.
According to a Research Physical Scientist, the lab will perform the tests pro-bono.
"The Smithsonian is regarded as the nation's museum and we are privileged to work with federal, state and, and local governments," said research scientist Christine France.
Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones is thrilled with the collaboration. "I am very grateful to the Smithsonian for trying to help us close the files on these two unidentified individuals. Our detectives have worked tirelessly over the years to find out just who these people are. I hope with this new technology we can finally give their families closure," said Sheriff Jones.
Anyone with information is asked to call the KCSO at (865)215-2243.
http://downtown.wbir.com/news/news/46872-smithsonian-institution-trying-help-solve-knox-co-cold-cases
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Knox investigators hope age regressed photos will crack cold cases - By Stephanie Beecken - May 09, 2012
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - The Knox County Sheriff's Department is getting help from the Smithsonian in the hopes of solving two unsolved cases.
The Smithsonian uses cutting edge technology to identify artifacts. Now, the new testing is being used to help identify two shooting victims from the 1980s.
Very little is known about these two individuals. Both were shot and killed in separate incidents and have never been identified.
"He had suffered a gunshot wound to the back of his head and that's really all we know of him," said Amy Dobbs, a forensic officer with the Knox County Sheriff's Department. "She was picked up off the interstate, brought back to Knoxville, got into an argument and unfortunately was killed."
Dobbs is trying to close the two cold cases, so she contacted the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for help. The Smithsonian is one of three labs in the U.S. to use new isotopes testing.
"They are taking the teeth of these unidentified individuals and they are breaking down the hydrogen and oxygen," Dobbs said.
She says the enamel on your teeth forms until the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up.
"That is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that you breathe," she said.
Experts can narrow where a person grew up to just a couple states.
Then, Dobbs will take the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as children to where experts believe they grew up, showing media and law enforcement hoping the individuals are recognized.
Dobbs says having a fresh lead on a cold case is incredible and could provide closure for the victims' loved ones
"This person could be someone's mother, brother, father, or her sister," she said. "Somebody out there has to care about these two individuals and want to know what happened to them."
The Smithsonian has been studying the teeth for four weeks.
Dobbs expects to know the regions where the two people grew up by the end of February.
She says this new testing could eventually change the way local law enforcement agencies investigate unidentified cold cases.
http://www.wate.com/story/18246168/knox-cold-cases
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'Jane Doe' from 1987 is still a mystery - 1987 victim one of thousands unidentified - By Jim Balloch - November 29, 2009
Ghostly and angular, the image of the young woman's face has haunted Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives for more than 22 years.
There is a slight, quizzical tilt to her head. Her eyes are level and hard, fixed forever in a wary gaze. Her look is of one who has taken plenty of hard knocks and expects more to come.
In the early morning hours of June 1, 1987, at a North Knox County home, her life ended with a 12-gauge shotgun blast to the head.
"There wasn't any ID on her of any kind," said Sgt. Perry Moyers of KCSO's Cold Case Squad. "Not even a wallet. No clues. There was just nothing."
It is just one of thousands of cases of unidentified bodies from around the country. No one knows for sure how many there are.
The FBI's National Crime Information Center lists 7,212 such cumulative cases, including 62 from Tennessee. But NCIC accepts reports only from law enforcement agencies. Medical examiners, coroners and other sources are excluded.
Researchers and criminologists say the actual number is much higher. A U.S. Justice Department study found an average of 4,400 unidentified human bodies reported each year, of which about 1,000 remain unidentified a year after being found.
"My personal opinion is that the real number is in excess of 60,000," said George Adams, program coordinator for the Center for Human Identification, the world-renowned DNA forensics lab at the University of North Texas. "When I call agencies relative to a case and ask how many unidentified remains they have, the number seems to go up."
Undoubtedly, some of those are of people who have been reported missing, but remain unidentified because police do not have enough clues to connect the body to a missing person case.
"We don't know what proportion of (eventually unidentified remains) were missing persons," said Dr. Kenna Quinet, a professor of criminal justice at Indiana University and Purdue University.
But thousands of missing or lost persons are never reported missing, especially if they are on the margins of society - prostitutes, transients, drug addicts, gay hustlers and mentally ill or homeless persons.
"We cannot expect the police to look for victims whose families never even reported them missing," Quinet said.
Quinet refers to this population as: "the missing missing."
"We don't have a good handle on this situation at all," said Libba Phillips, founder of the Florida-based Outpost For Hope, an organization dedicated to raising public awareness about that category of cases.
"There are just too many cracks in the system for these people to fall through," she said - including an occasional reluctance or refusal by a police agency to accept a missing persons report.
Phillips has coined a term for "missing missing" children and teenagers, including runaways whose indifferent parents or guardians do not bother to report them missing: "kids off the grid."
"They are the most vulnerable of these cases, and the most hidden group of missing or lost children," Phillips said.
Quinet, Adams and others agree that such people are often the victims of serial killers, some of whom delay or avoid arrest by preying on people who are not likely to be missed. Most of "Green River Killer" Gary Leon Ridgway's dozens of victims were street prostitutes.
"I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be," he said after he was caught. "I picked them because I thought I could kill as many as I wanted without getting caught."
There is no mystery about where, why or by whom Knox County's "Jane Doe" was killed.
"We know just about everything about this case - except who she is," Moyers said.
It is a case of a choice she made that landed her in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time, Moyers said.
She was picked up hitchhiking in Greene County by two men - either at a rest stop or truck stop, depending on which man is telling the story.
"We don't have any idea where she came from," Moyers said. "It could be anywhere."
The men drove her back to their Jim Sterchi Road residence. "Basically, (the men later) admitted they were going to rob a house," Moyers said.
The targeted house was occupied by a 23-year-old woman who had recently been robbed. And she had a 12-gauge shotgun. A friend was staying with her.
Jane Doe and one of the men went to the porch and created a ruckus, Perry said. It appears they were staging a fight to trick the resident into opening the door. The women inside the house were on the telephone with a 911 dispatcher when the ruckus escalated, with loud banging on the door and threats, Moyers said.
The resident fired a 12-gauge shotgun through the door, killing Jane Doe instantly.
The two men fled but were later arrested. The only clue they offered to Jane Doe's identity, Moyers said, was that "Tina" and "Illinois" came up during their conversations.
"But we don't know the context of that, if it means she was Tina from Illinois, or she was going to Illinois to see a Tina, or something else," Moyers said.
Either way, "Tina" does not match with the amateurish tattoo "BH" on her upper left arm.
KCSO has checked her fingerprints in several criminal and civil databases, with no results.
Jane Doe had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent. She was in her mid-20s, just under 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds. She had brown hair, brown eyes.
She wore an aqua-colored Miami Dolphins jersey number 32, light blue pants, tennis shoes and white socks. There was a silver-colored chain bracelet on her left wrist.
She was missing a lower front tooth. Prior injures, according to the autopsy, suggest normal medical issues or accidents, but not abuse, Moyers said she had a crushed vertebrae that likely caused her back pain; healed fractures of the clavicle and right and left tibia bones, with the left tibia secured by a metal pin; a healed fracture of the fibula, secured by a metal plate manufactured by "Synthes."
A horizontal scar on her abdomen suggests pelvic surgery of some sort, possibly an emergency Caesarean section, said Dr. Randy Pedigo, who was Knox County's medical examiner at the time.
"Those injuries, that medical information, will be far more important in identifying her than the (recreated) image of her face," said forensic anthropologist Dr. Emily Craig of the Kentucky State Medical Examiner's Office.
Craig is a former graduate student at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center and had a role in developing the computer enhancement of Jane Doe's face.
"Somebody, somewhere, has probably at least wondered what ever happened to her," said Todd Matthews of the Southeast region of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, a new U.S. Justice Department program designed to facilitate the linkage of unidentified remains cases with missing persons reports.
"But the circumstances of this case certainly make her a good candidate to be one of those 'missing missing.'"
Anyone with relevant information may contact the KCSO Cold Case Squad at coldcase@knoxsheriff.org or Moyers 865-215-3742.
"She's somebody's daughter, and she may be somebody's sister or maybe even somebody's mother," Moyers said. "We would like to get her identified and maybe give closure to a family."
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local/jane-doe-from-1987-is-still-a-mystery-ep-409297099-359065771.html
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Cases of unidentified adults quickly go cold -Tennessee lacks central storehouse, formal record keeping on Does - By Ansley Haman - May 21, 2007
To Lee Meadows Jantz, the dead person's reconstructed face shown on the Internet did not reflect the features of a young white woman, as the Web site theorized.
Jantz, coordinator of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, believed the remains found floating in the Cumberland River in 1993 were actually those of another ethnicity.
Further, she suspected the person's bones might be in the center's collection right here in Knoxville.
They were, and after a brief examination of the skeleton, she pegged it to be that of a black male, possibly 40 years old.
Jantz, who had seen the image on the Web site of a volunteer sleuthing group, contacted Nashville police with her findings. The remains are being analyzed at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in connection with a January 1993 disappearance of a black man, said Detective David Achord with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
"We've been missing him all these years," Jantz said.
The case highlights some of the pitfalls of connecting names with the remains of unidentified adults, Jantz said.
Tennessee operates a clearinghouse for children reported missing, and the federal government requires agencies to track them as well. But no one is required to look out for the bodies of missing or unidentified adults.
In fact, many of the state's unidentified bodies quickly become cold cases. They end up being buried, cremated, stored in medical examiners' morgues, or donated to Jantz's center. Information gets lost, and identifying them can be extremely difficult, she said.
"If a body doesn't get identified fairly quickly, it falls back in its level of importance, and that is simply a fact of lack of resources," Jantz said.
There are four federal databases that amass DNA and missing-person information, but the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, remains the most widely known and used.
Law enforcement agencies can enter remains and must validate entries once a year, said James Van Pelt, FBI special counsel for the Knoxville office. There are codes for fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
Of more than 40,000 unidentified remains known to exist nationwide, only an estimated 6,000, or about 15 percent, are listed in NCIC, according to a January 2007 Department of Justice National Institute of Justice report.
California, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas have laws that focus on locating missing adults and identifying bodies. Texas has a centralized DNA database that collects samples from families of the missing and compiles samples of unidentified remains.
Tennessee, however, has no such missing-person clearinghouse or legislation requiring a systematic filing of information about the cases.
Jantz estimates there are about 100 Tennessee bodies in her donated and forensic collection. While she can't give a definitive number, she's in the midst of an inventory. Her count doesn't include bodies held by medical examiners or buried locally.
Even when Jantz completes her count, she will not be able to enter the bodies in her collection into NCIC. Only government agencies are allowed to catalogue information. All she can do is urge local law enforcement officials who originally investigated the case to compile records and enter them.
The system is broken in many ways, she said.
Limited resources Jantz and her husband, UT anthropologist Richard L. Jantz, have considered creating their own database of unidentified bodies, but limited resources and the enormity of the project would make it difficult.
Many remains came to the center through the efforts of Dr. William Bass over more than three decades, Jantz said.
The forensic collection contains bones held on behalf of law enforcement agencies. Most of the Does in the donated collection came from medical examiner's offices that signed over unidentified remains after autopsies were completed.
Donated bodies generally are allowed to decompose at the center's outdoor scientific research center, commonly known as the Body Farm, before the bones are returned to storage.
"Last year, we started re-evaluating our cold cases," she said. "We have better methods today and better technology that allows us to provide, hopefully, better estimates of a biological profile."
For example, the center has produced updated reports about a woman murdered in Knox County in 1987. Jantz said she contacted Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives who informed her the file was in the archives, and it might be difficult to follow up on the new information.
Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the department follows any new leads that arise in the county's cold cases.
"None of that stuff is in a database. It's all hard copy," Jantz said. "They don't have the resources for cold cases, and right now, they're concentrating on current cases."
Greene County Sheriff's Department Detective Capt. John Huffine said "there's umpteen databases you can query."
Smaller jurisdictions need to send their detectives for more training on Internet and interagency resources, Huffine said. But most of the area law enforcement agencies' detective divisions are stretched thin.
Identifying bodies is nothing like it's depicted on TV crime shows, retired Campbell County Sheriff's Detective Eddie Barton said.
"People think that you go out and just all of the sudden miraculously come up with clues. You can get a DNA analysis in 15 minutes on TV," Barton said. "I just laugh."
Barton chased dozens of leads on two Jane Does dumped in his county in the late 1990s. It took a decade to identify one of them. The other remains in a Campbell County grave marked "Unknown."
Web sleuths The Web is one aid for law enforcement officers with limited resources, Barton said.
He reported Campbell County's cases to nonprofit Web sites when NCIC yielded no matches. Barton said he personally contacted the Doe Network and requested their assistance with the county's unidentified bodies.
The Doe Network consists of volunteer Web sleuths who try to help law enforcement agencies solve missing persons and unidentified body cases. The group operates its own Web site and lists 13 Jane Does in Tennessee, including the 1993 Nashville listing that Jantz realized was actually a man.
Recently the Doe Network was credited with helping Campbell County solve the case of an unidentified woman.
"They have an incredible goal, but they are in some ways being irresponsible with this," Jantz said of groups that post information that could mislead investigators. "I just think, it's obvious that we've got these bodies, but they're not contacting us."
Todd Matthews, Doe Network spokesman, said volunteers continually work to update information. They take credit for assisting in about 40 positive identifications of bodies.
"Some (volunteers) have missing family members," Matthews said. "People from all walks of life come together for the common good."
He said he knows those cases listed on his network are only a few of the total unidentified bodies in Tennessee. He estimated there are at least 60 across the state.
But again, no one seems to know a definite number.
Ansley Haman may be reached at 865-342-6341.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/may/21/cases-of-unidentified-adults-quickly-go-cold/
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Unclaimed, unnamed - Law enforcement agencies face startling numbers and staggering odds to identify young female 'Jane Does' - By Ansley Haman - May 20, 2007
JELLICO, Tenn. - Nameless and faceless, her decomposing body appeared in Detective Eddie Barton's mind each time he drove along Stinking Creek Road.
He'd tick off the details to himself: Black female younger than 40. No scars. No tattoos.
One gunshot wound to the head. Stab wounds. A discolored line about the width of a wedding band on one finger.
Found Oct. 25, 1998, by a man collecting soda cans.
That's all Barton, now retired, knew about her. That's all Campbell County Sheriff's Department detectives know today.
But they haven't forgotten the woman now buried in a Campbell County graveyard marked "Unknown."
Referred to by investigators as "Jane Doe No. 2," she is one of the untold unidentified and unclaimed bodies found by law enforcement agencies in Tennessee.
Some are murder victims. Some appear to be homeless. Most turn out to be from out of town.
At least 15 of those men and women found over the past three decades in East Tennessee remain unidentified. The bodies are in graves, morgues and at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center.
Nobody, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, keeps an official, exact number. No central database exists. The state doesn't require agencies to report missing adults and unidentified remains.
When the unidentified bodies at UT are added to those buried or cremated by local agencies, there may be more than 100 Tennessee cases.
"It's very startling, if you do a graph of this: You've got lots and lots of young females," said Lee Meadows Jantz, coordinator of the UT Forensic Anthropology Center, of data entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC.
Young males are more frequently killed in acts of violence, such as street fighting. Those bodies are generally fresh and more easily identifiable, Jantz said.
Often victims of abduction, dead females are hidden or left to the elements, she said. Then they decompose and become difficult to identify. Older men, many of whom are transient, also appear in unidentified body lists.
Local agencies often fend for themselves in identifying the dead. Most area police departments don't have a homicide squad or cold case unit. And there is little interagency communication, Barton said.
Though police officers work diligently for the first few months on a case, a lack of leads usually makes a Doe secondary to other investigations, authorities said.
Family members of a missing adult sometimes call to inquire about a possible match. Volunteer Web sleuths also try to make connections. Forensic anthropologists and artists volunteer their expertise.
But making the pieces fit takes time, said Oak Ridge Police Department Detective Sgt. Louis Leopper.
Years after his retirement, Barton still carries a folder filled with tips, exhausted leads and communications about his old, unidentified cases.
"These cases, they're like a cancer kind of eating at you," he said.
Following are stories of some of East Tennessee's unclaimed dead.
Five Jane Does in Campbell County It's been almost a decade without any breaks in the case of Campbell County's Jane Doe No. 2.
Where to start?
How about a name.
"You have to have an identity to have a starting point," Barton said. "Unless you have somebody with a conscience walk in there."
After she was found, Barton and his coworkers drafted fliers and sent them to other law enforcement agencies, organized a facial reconstruction, voluntarily entered her information into NCIC and listed the body on nonprofit Web sites that seek to match those known to be missing with unidentified bodies.
Family members of missing black women called. Web sleuths offered possible matches. Officers investigated the potential identities.
None matched.
No. 2's file is not the only one Barton keeps.
Since the mid-1980s, at least five unidentified females have been found in the county of about 40,000 residents. Many were found along I-75 between Jellico and Caryville, an isolated stretch of road.
One, a young redhead, was found in the mid-1980s along a straightaway. The bones of a girl also were unearthed in 1985.
Barton keeps records on another woman once known as "Jane Doe No. 1." More than 10 years ago she was found strangled, stabbed and dumped on an I-75 exit ramp
A nonprofit group, the Doe Network, put Campbell authorities in touch with their counterparts in El Paso, Texas. In March the woman was identified as Ada Elena Torres Smith.
Finding her identity broke the Smith case open again, said Capt. Don Farmer with the Campbell County Sheriff's Office.
Farmer and Barton think the murders of Smith and Jane Doe No. 2 may be connected. They were found a little more than a mile apart near Stinking Creek Road in consecutive years.
'Lady of the Lake' About two miles downstream from Clark Center Park on Melton Hill Lake, two fishermen found a woman's body floating beneath an undercut bank on March 6, 2000.
Leopper, of the Oak Ridge Police Department, calls the woman estimated to be in her 20s the "Lady of the Lake."
She drowned.
Leopper believes it was murder.
He has a theory about how it happened.
He thinks the woman, who stood about 5 feet, 9 inches, may have frequented truck stops. Dental records showed she may have worn braces and frequented a dentist.
Leopper believes she "was picked up or abducted by a local individual."
She may have then been drowned in Melton Hill Lake. Police believe her body was underwater for a few weeks before the fishermen found her.
But there is no way to know for sure until someone comes forward with evidence or officers make a positive ID.
Her dental records and fingerprints may help give her a name, Leopper said. The details are in the NCIC database, but that does not ensure she will be matched with a missing adult. It takes time and narrow search criteria.
"Until you hit that right keystroke, you'll never know who that person is," Leopper said.
Mile marker 44 Detective Capt. John Huffine of the Greene County Sheriff's Department is waiting for an NCIC entry to produce a fruitful lead on an unidentified body dumped more than 20 years ago along Interstate 81. She was left at mile marker 44.
TBI assisted with the 1985 case. The girl, estimated to be in her teens, was four to six weeks pregnant. Her hair was tinted red.
She died of head trauma.
Her naked body was found about the same time as the red-haired Campbell County Jane Doe. Some thought their cases might be connected, but the ties were never proven. Neither has been identified.
Huffine was a senior in high school when authorities began the investigation, but he's worked during his tenure to spread the word about the case.
The girl's dental record is in NCIC, her information is listed on nonprofit Web sites, and Huffine presented the case to the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, which connects participating local agencies.
"It's not as frustrating as if it had been a local homicide," Huffine said. "It's a homicide that happened somewhere else."
She may have been a runaway or someone estranged from her family, he said.
"Nobody's reported her," he said. "Otherwise, she would have been identified."
Under the tramway She may have walked out beneath Gatlinburg's Aerial Tramway, taken a seat beneath a tree and passed out. About a month later her decomposing body was found by someone taking a shortcut to a Cove Mountain chalet.
"It appears that she sat down next to a tree and just expired," said Detective Tim Williams of the Gatlinburg Police Department.
Since Dec. 22, 1974, authorities have been chasing leads on the identity of the woman who stood 5 feet, 7 inches and weighed about 140 pounds.
There was no evidence of trauma, he said. Her sweater and coat were folded neatly next to her.
She wore dark blue, Mayer-Land-Marquis pants (size extra-large) and a white, short-sleeved shirt with a yellow flower print.
Officers never found a purse or a wallet that could have held a driver's license or a library card with her name.
Though no fingerprints could be taken from her badly decomposed body, the department worked hard on the case at the time, keeping good records, Williams said.
"When this was new, there was a lot of effort put into it," he said.
The department entered the details into NCIC and chased numerous leads.
"We go for years with nothing, and then we'll get leads all at one time," he said.
He's had about four tips in the 10 years he's been a detective.
"Prior to that, there were dozens of eliminations," he said.
'Shotgun female' Around 2:30 a.m. June 1, 1987, a 12-gauge shotgun slug blew through the front door of a North Knox County home, ripping the face off a woman raising a ruckus on the porch.
Knox County Sheriff's Office authorities speculated at the time that the unidentified woman and two male accomplices were attempting to trick and rob the resident on Jim Sterchi Road by faking a fight outside her front door.
The woman kicked the door, awakening the resident and a visitor. The resident called police and fired one shot from a shotgun when the woman attempted to open a screen door.
The two men were caught. But they were unable to identify the woman. They said they had picked her up at a Greene County rest stop just before the shooting.
Jantz, of the UT Forensic Anthropology Center, said she and her colleagues dubbed the dead woman "Shotgun Female."
The case is archived in Sheriff's Office records, and spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the department follows up on all leads on the woman's identity.
A UT forensic anthropology student generated a computer reconstruction of the woman in the early 1990s.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/may/20/unclaimed-unnamed/
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http://goo.gl/maps/j2iok Map link - Pilot Travel Center, 3624 Roy Messer Highway, White Pine, TN 37890
Jim Sterchi Rd, Knoxville, TN 37918
31 YEARS June 1, 2018! NEW INFORMATION! CAN SOCIAL MEDIA FIND HER FAMILY? KNOX COUNTY JANE DOE CAME FROM ONE OF TEN TATES - PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, OHIO, MICHIGAN, INDIANA, ILLINOIS, MINNESOTA, MARYLAND, VIRGINIA & WEST VIRGINIA. In 2013 officer Amy Dobbs sent her teeth to be tested by the Smithsonian Institute, they had found she came from one of 13 states; Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida. As new testing methods are developed, the Smithsonian re-evaluated the previous testing results and adjusted the states to a more Northern focus in 2014. PLEASE DISREGARD THE OLD RESULTS AS THEY ARE NOT ACCURATE.
The victim who carried no identification, was killed around 2:30 am June 1, 1987 by a 12-gauge shotgun at Jim Sterchi Road in North Knox County, TN. At the time, authorities speculated that the unidentified woman and two male accomplices were attempting to trick and rob a 23 year old, female resident by faking a fight outside her front door. The woman kicked the door, awakening the resident and a visitor. The resident called police and fired one shot from a shotgun when the woman attempted to open a screen door. The resident had been robbed before, so she was very scared.
Jane was in her mid-20s, just under 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds. She had brown hair, brown eyes. She wore an aqua-colored Miami Dolphins jersey number 32 that was given to her by one of the guys she was with, light blue pants, tennis shoes and white socks. There was a silver-colored chain bracelet on her left wrist.
She was missing a lower front tooth. Prior injures, according to the autopsy, suggest normal medical issues or accidents, but not abuse, She had a crushed vertebrae that likely caused her back pain; healed fractures of the clavicle and right and left tibia bones, with the left tibia secured by a metal pin; a healed fracture of the fibula, secured by a metal plate manufactured by "Synthes." A horizontal scar on her abdomen suggests pelvic surgery of some sort, possibly an emergency Caesarean section. Her autopsy states that she still had her uterus & ovaries so it was not a hysterectomy.
"She's somebody's daughter, and she may be somebody's sister or maybe even somebody's mother," "We would like to get her identified and maybe give closure to a family."
Facts about "Jane"
- Her hair color on the recon is apparently very accurate as to her hair color in real life.
- Ears were not pierced
- Tattoo - initial’s “B.H.” on the upper left arm approximately 2cm in width, 1 cm in height. Home made
alcohol level 1.3
Leg injury- It is indicated it occurred around 1985-1986 based off what the Synthes company told someone that called
synthes plate: The number on the plate was a lot number and the maker Synthes didn’t keep track of where the plates were distributed once they were made and shipped. It is indicated that the leg injury occurred around 1985-1986 based off what the maker of the “rod and screw” told an advocate.
The silver colored chain bracelet on her right wrist was what would be described as round loop links. It was the only piece of jewelry that she had on. Photo available on her NamUs profile.
Name- The only clue the men offered to Jane Doe's identity, was that "Tina" and "Illinois" came up during their conversations. "But we don't know the context of that, if it means she was Tina from Illinois, or she was going to Illinois to see a Tina, or something else"
Her shoes were quite old and worn which is what the men indicated to the police when interviewed which is why they gave her the Dolphins jersey.
NamUS https://identifyus.org/cases/1567
Case Report - NamUs UP # 1567 https://identifyus.org/cases/full_report/1567
The Doe Network: 607UFTN http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/607uftn.html
Autopsy Report Direct Link -Looks like partialhttp://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/2009/112909autopsyweb01.pdf
FBI VICAP ALERT - https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/unidentified-persons/jane-doe-35/view
Knox County Sheriff Cold Cases 1987 Unidentified White Female - http://www.knoxsheriff.org/coldcase/unidentified_white_female.php
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NEWS ARTICLES -
Knox County Sheriff’s Department tries to solve cold case - POSTED: 5:58 PM Jun 05 2013
"The Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit in Knoxville, Tenn. is requesting the media’s assistance in helping disseminate the following information to their viewers in the hopes that identification will be made of an unidentified white female who was shot and killed June 1, 1987. It is important that the media help in these types of cases as it is often the only way that a case will find answers. As an adult, it is not a crime to go missing. Unfortunately, with these types of cases often a report is never taken or the report gets misplaced. As time passes, the report may not continue to be validated in NCIC (National Criminal Information Center) allowing for the information to be removed from the system or the report gets filed away without another thought. These cases will have little chance of ever being resolved and a family will continue to go without answers. The outreach that the media has is crucial to finding resolution on many if not all of these types of “Cold Cases.”
Due to the Media’s coverage we recently had success in identifying another long term unidentified male victim from 1982. Unfortunately, with his case a missing persons report was taken but then filed away and forgotten. Because he was never entered into NCIC a hit between the 2 cases was never made. Unless we are able to promote “Jane Doe” on a national level our attempts to identify her will fail.
In a Knox County case from 1987, a woman believed to be in her 20s was picked up by some truckers at the truck stop on I-81 in Bulls Gap, TN. She was then taken to a party at a home on Stanley Road where she was shot and killed later that night. While the people behind her death did go to court, the victim herself has never been identified. The woman had a few unique traits, including the initials "BH" tattooed on her upper left arm, a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a c-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of 3 labs in the United States that is able to perform this type of testing to narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child. The Smithsonian Institution Lab is called the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Lab and is located in Suitland, Maryland. The testing was done on a tooth sample and analyzed for stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen values in dentin and enamel which represent isotope values incorporated during adolescence. Teeth of the unidentified white female were taken and broken down to study the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel. The enamel on teeth develops until approximately the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up. It is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that we breathe. The hope is that the public will see the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as a child in the region provided by the testing.
The tests that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. conducted on the unidentified woman show that she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If anyone has any information regarding the unidentified white female, please contact Detective Amy Dobbs with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit @ 865-215-3705.
Seen above are digital images of what the woman might have looked like as a teenager and around the time she was killed.
http://www.wcyb.com/news/knox-county-sheriffs-department-tries-to-solve-cold-case/20440244
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Knox County Sheriff's office needs your help solving a cold case - Posted: Jun 04, 2013 11:42 AM EDT Updated: Jun 04, 2013 11:42 AM EDT
Knox County Sheriff's Office needs your help in solving a cold case of an unidentified woman who was shot and killed June 1, 1987. She is believed to have been in her twenties at the time of her death.
The unidentified woman was picked up by some truckers at the truck stop on I-81 in Bulls Gap, TN. She was then taken to a party at a home on Stanley Road where she was shot and killed later that night. While the people behind her death did go to court, the victim herself has never been identified. The woman had a few unique traits, including the initials "BH" tattooed on her upper left arm, a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a c-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
JANE DOE SPECIFICS:http://content.foxtvmedia.com/whbq/JaneDoe.pdf
The Knox County Sheriff's Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of the three labs in the United States that is able to perform this type of testing to narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child. The Smithsonian Institution Lab is called the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Lab and is located in Suitland, Maryland. The testing was done on a tooth sample and analyzed for stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen values in dentin and enamel which represent isotope values incorporated during adolescence. Teeth of the unidentified white female were taken and broken down to study the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel. The enamel on teeth develops until approximately the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up. It is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that we breathe. The hope is that the public will see the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as a child in the region provided by the testing.
The tests that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. conducted on the unidentified woman show that she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If anyone has any information regarding the unidentified white female, please contact Detective Amy Dobbs with the Knox County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit @ 865-215-3705.
Detective Amy Dobbs, Knox County Sheriff's Office, Cold Case Unit provided the information.
http://www.fox13memphis.com/story/22497939/knox-county-sheriffs-office-needs-your-help-solving-a-cold-case
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Knoxville Investigators Ask For Public’s Help To Solve Cold Case - by Claire Aiello - Posted 4:46 pm, May 23, 2013
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WHNT) – The Knox County, Tenn. Sheriff’s Office is hoping the public can help them identify a ‘Jane Doe.’ The woman was murdered in 1987 and they’ve never been able to determine who she was.
Investigators provided two sketches of what they believe the woman may have looked like in her teens, around age 15 or 16, and between age 20 and 30, when she was murdered.
The woman was shot to death on June 1, 1987. Investigators say she was picked up by truckers at a truck stop in Bulls Gap, Tennessee, and taken to a party where she was shot and killed.
The people behind her death went to court, but investigators have never been able to determine the woman’s name.
She had the initials ‘BH’ tattooed on her upper left arm and a scar on her abdomen that could have been from a C-section or a hysterectomy. She also had several healed fractures that could be consistent with a car accident and she had a metal plate in one of her legs from the injuries.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office recently had help from the Smithsonian, one of three labs in the United States that is able to perform specialized testing that can narrow a possible region where the unidentified woman could have lived as a child.
Experts analyzed a tooth sample from the unidentified woman and determined she may have spent significant time in the central-southeastern United States. The data indicates a broad region where the woman may have spent a lot of time. Scientists believe the woman may have been from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida.
If you have any information on who the woman might be, please call the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit in Tennessee at (865) 215-3705.
http://whnt.com/2013/05/23/knoxville-investigators-ask-for-publics-help-to-solve-cold-case/
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Jane Doe came from 1 of the 13 southeastern U.S. states - By Lauren Davis - Posted: Wed 5:17 PM, Feb 20, 2013 - Updated: Wed 6:39 PM, Feb 20, 2013
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT)--Investigators are one step closer to solving a murder case from more than two decades ago. We recently told you about forensic testing on a woman found murdered in Knox County. Amy Dobbs has been tirelessly working this case for 2 years and what she found is bringer her closer than ever to identifying the mystery woman.
There's a picture of Jane Doe showing what investigators think she looked like when she was murdered in 1987 in Knox County. Now there are two new photos showing the mystery murder victim at age 14 with two different hairstyles. Amy Dobbs says, "I hope we still have a lot of family alive to identify her."
Identifying her is difficult, but now there's more evidence than ever to help put a name with the face. The Smithsonian Institute, tested her teeth and narrowed down the region where she grew up. Investigators say she was raised in the central and southeastern US in one of 13 states including Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida. Dobbs says, "She could have come in from Canada we just didn't know. Now we know she came from one of the 13 states."
Jim Sterchi Road is where the woman took her last breath. Two men picked her up at a rest stop and brought her to the Jim Sterchi area to commit a home robbery, but the homeowner shot through the front door killing Jane Doe."
Neighbors found her body, but no one ever identified her. Now Amy plans on notifying all 13 states to try and get some answers.
Dobbs says, "We've got a lot to work with now and a lot of work needs to be done."
Jane Doe had a fractured collar bone, two fractured ankles and a fractured back. She also had a tattoo on her upper left arm. It was the letters "B.H.".
There is also a John Doe whose teeth were tested at the Smithsonian Institute. The media attention from that case has brought forward some great leads.
We'll keep you posted on both cases.
http://www.local8now.com/home/headlines/Jane-Doe-came-from-1-of-the-13-southeastern-US-states-192126931.html
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Smithsonian Institution to help Knox County with unsolved killings - By Kevin Connelly - Posted February 12, 2013 at 4 a.m.
Thanks to new testing available at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Knox County Sheriff's Office authorities hope they are one step closer to identifying two homicide victims from years ago.
The teeth of an unidentified victim from 1982 and a 1987 Jane Doe have been sent to a laboratory for what is known as stable isotopes analysis, with the hope of determining the geographic region in which they grew up.
When forensic officer Amy Dobbs of the Sheriff's Office was put in charge of department cold cases nearly two years ago, the killing investigations were both at a stand-still. After reading about how stable isotope testing can eliminate up to 80 or 90 percent of the world when finding where somebody spent their childhood years, Dobbs decided to make her best sales pitch to the Smithsonian, one of only three testing sites in the country.
Her first contact with them was in late December, with the expectation that she wouldn't hear back any time soon. But it was just days later, she said, that they responded with a decision to extend their services and aid in the investigation.
"I'm really excited that they have picked up our two cases to help us," Dobbs said. "It may or may not lead to identifications of both of them, but just the fact that it's a new lead that we have to go down is pretty amazing to me."
She wasted no time sending the necessary teeth to Dr. Christine France, who manages the Smithsonian's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory.
Dobbs is hoping to have an answer by the end of this month, assuming there are no glitches in the process.
"We are looking at the chemical components in the teeth that are directly transferred from ingested water and attempting to match the teeth to an area with drinking water of a similar chemical signature," France explained. "The accuracy will be limited to a general area, such as the (U.S.) Southeast or Canadian Rocky Mountain region."
Admittedly, France realizes those areas are quite large to conduct a search. However, she said that was just one element of KCSO's investigation.
Once analysis is complete, Dobbs plans to distribute facial regression pictures created by a laboratory at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge to the media and law enforcement in the pinpointed areas of origin. Her hope is that someone will recognize the images as resembling a childhood friend or possibly even a family member, in which case a DNA test would be performed to make a positive identification.
"You still have victims. You still have a victim's family, so somebody out there has to be missing them. They don't forget," she said. "It doesn't get any easier for them and they continue to search."
The technology used in stable isotope testing is fairly new to the United States, but France has seen it yield successful results over the last 10 years in other labs around the world. Her experience with it has been strictly for archaeological research to this point, but said she's looking forward to the opportunity to apply it to a modern case and help people in a practical way.
"I have applied this technique to hundreds of specimens with a fairly good success rate," France said. "Modern humans tend to have a more global diet, which does interfere somewhat with the chemical signatures of a local region. But my research and the work of others suggests the technique is still useful for identifying general area of origin in people today."
As an advocate for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Dobbs realizes the potential this could have on future cases.
"Who knows? If it does work it's going to open the doors for other long-term unidentified cases," she said. "These people were born with a name and we ought to be able to have the dignity to bury them with a name."
Renderings show one of two cold case murder victims that the Knox County Sheriff's Office hopes to identify with high-tech help from the Smithsonian Institution. A tooth from the young woman who was shot to death in 1987 will be given a stable isotope test to determine the area of the country where she was raised.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/feb/12/smithsonian-institution-to-help-knox-county-with/
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Smithsonian Institution trying to help solve Knox Co. cold cases - by WBIR Web Staff - Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, 1:15pm -
New technology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. could help Knox County detectives identify two people who were shot to death years ago, but were never identified.
The first victim is a white woman who was shot in
the head and found on June 1, 1987, outside a house on Jim Sterchi Road.
Two men had picked her up at a rest stop near Bulls Gap. She was taken to the house for what was believed to be a
robbery, and was shot by the homeowner. The two men said they didn't know her name.
She was 20-25 years old, 5'5", and weighed between 100-120
pounds. She had brown eyes and brown hair, and was wearing an aqua-colored
Miami Dolphins football jersey, light blue pants, and a silver link type
bracelet. The initials "B.H." were tattooed on her upper left arm. She
had a scar on her abdomen, possibly from a cesarean birth or
hysterectomy. Skeletal analysis revealed several healed fractures and
other previous injuries consistent with a car accident.
The second
unidentified victim is a black male who was shot to death in 1981. His body was found on January 12, 1982 in a
wooded lot near Clear Springs Road and Mascot Road. He was approximately
30-40 years old and 5'10", wearing a blue pullover shirt with a half
zipper, black colored pants, size 9D black boots with zippers, and red
and white socks at the time of death.
The testing, which will be done at the OUSS/MCI Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, will help narrow the region where the unidentified persons grew up. Once a region has been determined, age-regression pictures will then be released to the media and law enforcement agencies, in hopes someone will remember or recognize them.
This is the first time that the Knox County Sheriff's Office has been able to utilize this cutting edge technology. the work will be done free of charge.
According to a Research Physical Scientist, the lab will perform the tests pro-bono.
"The Smithsonian is regarded as the nation's museum and we are privileged to work with federal, state and, and local governments," said research scientist Christine France.
Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones is thrilled with the collaboration. "I am very grateful to the Smithsonian for trying to help us close the files on these two unidentified individuals. Our detectives have worked tirelessly over the years to find out just who these people are. I hope with this new technology we can finally give their families closure," said Sheriff Jones.
Anyone with information is asked to call the KCSO at (865)215-2243.
http://downtown.wbir.com/news/news/46872-smithsonian-institution-trying-help-solve-knox-co-cold-cases
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Knox investigators hope age regressed photos will crack cold cases - By Stephanie Beecken - May 09, 2012
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - The Knox County Sheriff's Department is getting help from the Smithsonian in the hopes of solving two unsolved cases.
The Smithsonian uses cutting edge technology to identify artifacts. Now, the new testing is being used to help identify two shooting victims from the 1980s.
Very little is known about these two individuals. Both were shot and killed in separate incidents and have never been identified.
"He had suffered a gunshot wound to the back of his head and that's really all we know of him," said Amy Dobbs, a forensic officer with the Knox County Sheriff's Department. "She was picked up off the interstate, brought back to Knoxville, got into an argument and unfortunately was killed."
Dobbs is trying to close the two cold cases, so she contacted the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for help. The Smithsonian is one of three labs in the U.S. to use new isotopes testing.
"They are taking the teeth of these unidentified individuals and they are breaking down the hydrogen and oxygen," Dobbs said.
She says the enamel on your teeth forms until the age of ten. By studying the hydrogen and oxygen in the enamel, experts can pinpoint the region where a person grew up.
"That is based off the plants that we eat, the water that we drink, rainwater, and the dust that you breathe," she said.
Experts can narrow where a person grew up to just a couple states.
Then, Dobbs will take the age regression photos showing what the victims probably looked like as children to where experts believe they grew up, showing media and law enforcement hoping the individuals are recognized.
Dobbs says having a fresh lead on a cold case is incredible and could provide closure for the victims' loved ones
"This person could be someone's mother, brother, father, or her sister," she said. "Somebody out there has to care about these two individuals and want to know what happened to them."
The Smithsonian has been studying the teeth for four weeks.
Dobbs expects to know the regions where the two people grew up by the end of February.
She says this new testing could eventually change the way local law enforcement agencies investigate unidentified cold cases.
http://www.wate.com/story/18246168/knox-cold-cases
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'Jane Doe' from 1987 is still a mystery - 1987 victim one of thousands unidentified - By Jim Balloch - November 29, 2009
Ghostly and angular, the image of the young woman's face has haunted Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives for more than 22 years.
There is a slight, quizzical tilt to her head. Her eyes are level and hard, fixed forever in a wary gaze. Her look is of one who has taken plenty of hard knocks and expects more to come.
In the early morning hours of June 1, 1987, at a North Knox County home, her life ended with a 12-gauge shotgun blast to the head.
"There wasn't any ID on her of any kind," said Sgt. Perry Moyers of KCSO's Cold Case Squad. "Not even a wallet. No clues. There was just nothing."
It is just one of thousands of cases of unidentified bodies from around the country. No one knows for sure how many there are.
The FBI's National Crime Information Center lists 7,212 such cumulative cases, including 62 from Tennessee. But NCIC accepts reports only from law enforcement agencies. Medical examiners, coroners and other sources are excluded.
Researchers and criminologists say the actual number is much higher. A U.S. Justice Department study found an average of 4,400 unidentified human bodies reported each year, of which about 1,000 remain unidentified a year after being found.
"My personal opinion is that the real number is in excess of 60,000," said George Adams, program coordinator for the Center for Human Identification, the world-renowned DNA forensics lab at the University of North Texas. "When I call agencies relative to a case and ask how many unidentified remains they have, the number seems to go up."
Undoubtedly, some of those are of people who have been reported missing, but remain unidentified because police do not have enough clues to connect the body to a missing person case.
"We don't know what proportion of (eventually unidentified remains) were missing persons," said Dr. Kenna Quinet, a professor of criminal justice at Indiana University and Purdue University.
But thousands of missing or lost persons are never reported missing, especially if they are on the margins of society - prostitutes, transients, drug addicts, gay hustlers and mentally ill or homeless persons.
"We cannot expect the police to look for victims whose families never even reported them missing," Quinet said.
Quinet refers to this population as: "the missing missing."
"We don't have a good handle on this situation at all," said Libba Phillips, founder of the Florida-based Outpost For Hope, an organization dedicated to raising public awareness about that category of cases.
"There are just too many cracks in the system for these people to fall through," she said - including an occasional reluctance or refusal by a police agency to accept a missing persons report.
Phillips has coined a term for "missing missing" children and teenagers, including runaways whose indifferent parents or guardians do not bother to report them missing: "kids off the grid."
"They are the most vulnerable of these cases, and the most hidden group of missing or lost children," Phillips said.
Quinet, Adams and others agree that such people are often the victims of serial killers, some of whom delay or avoid arrest by preying on people who are not likely to be missed. Most of "Green River Killer" Gary Leon Ridgway's dozens of victims were street prostitutes.
"I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be," he said after he was caught. "I picked them because I thought I could kill as many as I wanted without getting caught."
There is no mystery about where, why or by whom Knox County's "Jane Doe" was killed.
"We know just about everything about this case - except who she is," Moyers said.
It is a case of a choice she made that landed her in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time, Moyers said.
She was picked up hitchhiking in Greene County by two men - either at a rest stop or truck stop, depending on which man is telling the story.
"We don't have any idea where she came from," Moyers said. "It could be anywhere."
The men drove her back to their Jim Sterchi Road residence. "Basically, (the men later) admitted they were going to rob a house," Moyers said.
The targeted house was occupied by a 23-year-old woman who had recently been robbed. And she had a 12-gauge shotgun. A friend was staying with her.
Jane Doe and one of the men went to the porch and created a ruckus, Perry said. It appears they were staging a fight to trick the resident into opening the door. The women inside the house were on the telephone with a 911 dispatcher when the ruckus escalated, with loud banging on the door and threats, Moyers said.
The resident fired a 12-gauge shotgun through the door, killing Jane Doe instantly.
The two men fled but were later arrested. The only clue they offered to Jane Doe's identity, Moyers said, was that "Tina" and "Illinois" came up during their conversations.
"But we don't know the context of that, if it means she was Tina from Illinois, or she was going to Illinois to see a Tina, or something else," Moyers said.
Either way, "Tina" does not match with the amateurish tattoo "BH" on her upper left arm.
KCSO has checked her fingerprints in several criminal and civil databases, with no results.
Jane Doe had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent. She was in her mid-20s, just under 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds. She had brown hair, brown eyes.
She wore an aqua-colored Miami Dolphins jersey number 32, light blue pants, tennis shoes and white socks. There was a silver-colored chain bracelet on her left wrist.
She was missing a lower front tooth. Prior injures, according to the autopsy, suggest normal medical issues or accidents, but not abuse, Moyers said she had a crushed vertebrae that likely caused her back pain; healed fractures of the clavicle and right and left tibia bones, with the left tibia secured by a metal pin; a healed fracture of the fibula, secured by a metal plate manufactured by "Synthes."
A horizontal scar on her abdomen suggests pelvic surgery of some sort, possibly an emergency Caesarean section, said Dr. Randy Pedigo, who was Knox County's medical examiner at the time.
"Those injuries, that medical information, will be far more important in identifying her than the (recreated) image of her face," said forensic anthropologist Dr. Emily Craig of the Kentucky State Medical Examiner's Office.
Craig is a former graduate student at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center and had a role in developing the computer enhancement of Jane Doe's face.
"Somebody, somewhere, has probably at least wondered what ever happened to her," said Todd Matthews of the Southeast region of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, a new U.S. Justice Department program designed to facilitate the linkage of unidentified remains cases with missing persons reports.
"But the circumstances of this case certainly make her a good candidate to be one of those 'missing missing.'"
Anyone with relevant information may contact the KCSO Cold Case Squad at coldcase@knoxsheriff.org or Moyers 865-215-3742.
"She's somebody's daughter, and she may be somebody's sister or maybe even somebody's mother," Moyers said. "We would like to get her identified and maybe give closure to a family."
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local/jane-doe-from-1987-is-still-a-mystery-ep-409297099-359065771.html
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Cases of unidentified adults quickly go cold -Tennessee lacks central storehouse, formal record keeping on Does - By Ansley Haman - May 21, 2007
To Lee Meadows Jantz, the dead person's reconstructed face shown on the Internet did not reflect the features of a young white woman, as the Web site theorized.
Jantz, coordinator of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, believed the remains found floating in the Cumberland River in 1993 were actually those of another ethnicity.
Further, she suspected the person's bones might be in the center's collection right here in Knoxville.
They were, and after a brief examination of the skeleton, she pegged it to be that of a black male, possibly 40 years old.
Jantz, who had seen the image on the Web site of a volunteer sleuthing group, contacted Nashville police with her findings. The remains are being analyzed at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in connection with a January 1993 disappearance of a black man, said Detective David Achord with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
"We've been missing him all these years," Jantz said.
The case highlights some of the pitfalls of connecting names with the remains of unidentified adults, Jantz said.
Tennessee operates a clearinghouse for children reported missing, and the federal government requires agencies to track them as well. But no one is required to look out for the bodies of missing or unidentified adults.
In fact, many of the state's unidentified bodies quickly become cold cases. They end up being buried, cremated, stored in medical examiners' morgues, or donated to Jantz's center. Information gets lost, and identifying them can be extremely difficult, she said.
"If a body doesn't get identified fairly quickly, it falls back in its level of importance, and that is simply a fact of lack of resources," Jantz said.
There are four federal databases that amass DNA and missing-person information, but the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, remains the most widely known and used.
Law enforcement agencies can enter remains and must validate entries once a year, said James Van Pelt, FBI special counsel for the Knoxville office. There are codes for fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
Of more than 40,000 unidentified remains known to exist nationwide, only an estimated 6,000, or about 15 percent, are listed in NCIC, according to a January 2007 Department of Justice National Institute of Justice report.
California, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas have laws that focus on locating missing adults and identifying bodies. Texas has a centralized DNA database that collects samples from families of the missing and compiles samples of unidentified remains.
Tennessee, however, has no such missing-person clearinghouse or legislation requiring a systematic filing of information about the cases.
Jantz estimates there are about 100 Tennessee bodies in her donated and forensic collection. While she can't give a definitive number, she's in the midst of an inventory. Her count doesn't include bodies held by medical examiners or buried locally.
Even when Jantz completes her count, she will not be able to enter the bodies in her collection into NCIC. Only government agencies are allowed to catalogue information. All she can do is urge local law enforcement officials who originally investigated the case to compile records and enter them.
The system is broken in many ways, she said.
Limited resources Jantz and her husband, UT anthropologist Richard L. Jantz, have considered creating their own database of unidentified bodies, but limited resources and the enormity of the project would make it difficult.
Many remains came to the center through the efforts of Dr. William Bass over more than three decades, Jantz said.
The forensic collection contains bones held on behalf of law enforcement agencies. Most of the Does in the donated collection came from medical examiner's offices that signed over unidentified remains after autopsies were completed.
Donated bodies generally are allowed to decompose at the center's outdoor scientific research center, commonly known as the Body Farm, before the bones are returned to storage.
"Last year, we started re-evaluating our cold cases," she said. "We have better methods today and better technology that allows us to provide, hopefully, better estimates of a biological profile."
For example, the center has produced updated reports about a woman murdered in Knox County in 1987. Jantz said she contacted Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives who informed her the file was in the archives, and it might be difficult to follow up on the new information.
Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the department follows any new leads that arise in the county's cold cases.
"None of that stuff is in a database. It's all hard copy," Jantz said. "They don't have the resources for cold cases, and right now, they're concentrating on current cases."
Greene County Sheriff's Department Detective Capt. John Huffine said "there's umpteen databases you can query."
Smaller jurisdictions need to send their detectives for more training on Internet and interagency resources, Huffine said. But most of the area law enforcement agencies' detective divisions are stretched thin.
Identifying bodies is nothing like it's depicted on TV crime shows, retired Campbell County Sheriff's Detective Eddie Barton said.
"People think that you go out and just all of the sudden miraculously come up with clues. You can get a DNA analysis in 15 minutes on TV," Barton said. "I just laugh."
Barton chased dozens of leads on two Jane Does dumped in his county in the late 1990s. It took a decade to identify one of them. The other remains in a Campbell County grave marked "Unknown."
Web sleuths The Web is one aid for law enforcement officers with limited resources, Barton said.
He reported Campbell County's cases to nonprofit Web sites when NCIC yielded no matches. Barton said he personally contacted the Doe Network and requested their assistance with the county's unidentified bodies.
The Doe Network consists of volunteer Web sleuths who try to help law enforcement agencies solve missing persons and unidentified body cases. The group operates its own Web site and lists 13 Jane Does in Tennessee, including the 1993 Nashville listing that Jantz realized was actually a man.
Recently the Doe Network was credited with helping Campbell County solve the case of an unidentified woman.
"They have an incredible goal, but they are in some ways being irresponsible with this," Jantz said of groups that post information that could mislead investigators. "I just think, it's obvious that we've got these bodies, but they're not contacting us."
Todd Matthews, Doe Network spokesman, said volunteers continually work to update information. They take credit for assisting in about 40 positive identifications of bodies.
"Some (volunteers) have missing family members," Matthews said. "People from all walks of life come together for the common good."
He said he knows those cases listed on his network are only a few of the total unidentified bodies in Tennessee. He estimated there are at least 60 across the state.
But again, no one seems to know a definite number.
Ansley Haman may be reached at 865-342-6341.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/may/21/cases-of-unidentified-adults-quickly-go-cold/
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Unclaimed, unnamed - Law enforcement agencies face startling numbers and staggering odds to identify young female 'Jane Does' - By Ansley Haman - May 20, 2007
JELLICO, Tenn. - Nameless and faceless, her decomposing body appeared in Detective Eddie Barton's mind each time he drove along Stinking Creek Road.
He'd tick off the details to himself: Black female younger than 40. No scars. No tattoos.
One gunshot wound to the head. Stab wounds. A discolored line about the width of a wedding band on one finger.
Found Oct. 25, 1998, by a man collecting soda cans.
That's all Barton, now retired, knew about her. That's all Campbell County Sheriff's Department detectives know today.
But they haven't forgotten the woman now buried in a Campbell County graveyard marked "Unknown."
Referred to by investigators as "Jane Doe No. 2," she is one of the untold unidentified and unclaimed bodies found by law enforcement agencies in Tennessee.
Some are murder victims. Some appear to be homeless. Most turn out to be from out of town.
At least 15 of those men and women found over the past three decades in East Tennessee remain unidentified. The bodies are in graves, morgues and at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center.
Nobody, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, keeps an official, exact number. No central database exists. The state doesn't require agencies to report missing adults and unidentified remains.
When the unidentified bodies at UT are added to those buried or cremated by local agencies, there may be more than 100 Tennessee cases.
"It's very startling, if you do a graph of this: You've got lots and lots of young females," said Lee Meadows Jantz, coordinator of the UT Forensic Anthropology Center, of data entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC.
Young males are more frequently killed in acts of violence, such as street fighting. Those bodies are generally fresh and more easily identifiable, Jantz said.
Often victims of abduction, dead females are hidden or left to the elements, she said. Then they decompose and become difficult to identify. Older men, many of whom are transient, also appear in unidentified body lists.
Local agencies often fend for themselves in identifying the dead. Most area police departments don't have a homicide squad or cold case unit. And there is little interagency communication, Barton said.
Though police officers work diligently for the first few months on a case, a lack of leads usually makes a Doe secondary to other investigations, authorities said.
Family members of a missing adult sometimes call to inquire about a possible match. Volunteer Web sleuths also try to make connections. Forensic anthropologists and artists volunteer their expertise.
But making the pieces fit takes time, said Oak Ridge Police Department Detective Sgt. Louis Leopper.
Years after his retirement, Barton still carries a folder filled with tips, exhausted leads and communications about his old, unidentified cases.
"These cases, they're like a cancer kind of eating at you," he said.
Following are stories of some of East Tennessee's unclaimed dead.
Five Jane Does in Campbell County It's been almost a decade without any breaks in the case of Campbell County's Jane Doe No. 2.
Where to start?
How about a name.
"You have to have an identity to have a starting point," Barton said. "Unless you have somebody with a conscience walk in there."
After she was found, Barton and his coworkers drafted fliers and sent them to other law enforcement agencies, organized a facial reconstruction, voluntarily entered her information into NCIC and listed the body on nonprofit Web sites that seek to match those known to be missing with unidentified bodies.
Family members of missing black women called. Web sleuths offered possible matches. Officers investigated the potential identities.
None matched.
No. 2's file is not the only one Barton keeps.
Since the mid-1980s, at least five unidentified females have been found in the county of about 40,000 residents. Many were found along I-75 between Jellico and Caryville, an isolated stretch of road.
One, a young redhead, was found in the mid-1980s along a straightaway. The bones of a girl also were unearthed in 1985.
Barton keeps records on another woman once known as "Jane Doe No. 1." More than 10 years ago she was found strangled, stabbed and dumped on an I-75 exit ramp
A nonprofit group, the Doe Network, put Campbell authorities in touch with their counterparts in El Paso, Texas. In March the woman was identified as Ada Elena Torres Smith.
Finding her identity broke the Smith case open again, said Capt. Don Farmer with the Campbell County Sheriff's Office.
Farmer and Barton think the murders of Smith and Jane Doe No. 2 may be connected. They were found a little more than a mile apart near Stinking Creek Road in consecutive years.
'Lady of the Lake' About two miles downstream from Clark Center Park on Melton Hill Lake, two fishermen found a woman's body floating beneath an undercut bank on March 6, 2000.
Leopper, of the Oak Ridge Police Department, calls the woman estimated to be in her 20s the "Lady of the Lake."
She drowned.
Leopper believes it was murder.
He has a theory about how it happened.
He thinks the woman, who stood about 5 feet, 9 inches, may have frequented truck stops. Dental records showed she may have worn braces and frequented a dentist.
Leopper believes she "was picked up or abducted by a local individual."
She may have then been drowned in Melton Hill Lake. Police believe her body was underwater for a few weeks before the fishermen found her.
But there is no way to know for sure until someone comes forward with evidence or officers make a positive ID.
Her dental records and fingerprints may help give her a name, Leopper said. The details are in the NCIC database, but that does not ensure she will be matched with a missing adult. It takes time and narrow search criteria.
"Until you hit that right keystroke, you'll never know who that person is," Leopper said.
Mile marker 44 Detective Capt. John Huffine of the Greene County Sheriff's Department is waiting for an NCIC entry to produce a fruitful lead on an unidentified body dumped more than 20 years ago along Interstate 81. She was left at mile marker 44.
TBI assisted with the 1985 case. The girl, estimated to be in her teens, was four to six weeks pregnant. Her hair was tinted red.
She died of head trauma.
Her naked body was found about the same time as the red-haired Campbell County Jane Doe. Some thought their cases might be connected, but the ties were never proven. Neither has been identified.
Huffine was a senior in high school when authorities began the investigation, but he's worked during his tenure to spread the word about the case.
The girl's dental record is in NCIC, her information is listed on nonprofit Web sites, and Huffine presented the case to the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, which connects participating local agencies.
"It's not as frustrating as if it had been a local homicide," Huffine said. "It's a homicide that happened somewhere else."
She may have been a runaway or someone estranged from her family, he said.
"Nobody's reported her," he said. "Otherwise, she would have been identified."
Under the tramway She may have walked out beneath Gatlinburg's Aerial Tramway, taken a seat beneath a tree and passed out. About a month later her decomposing body was found by someone taking a shortcut to a Cove Mountain chalet.
"It appears that she sat down next to a tree and just expired," said Detective Tim Williams of the Gatlinburg Police Department.
Since Dec. 22, 1974, authorities have been chasing leads on the identity of the woman who stood 5 feet, 7 inches and weighed about 140 pounds.
There was no evidence of trauma, he said. Her sweater and coat were folded neatly next to her.
She wore dark blue, Mayer-Land-Marquis pants (size extra-large) and a white, short-sleeved shirt with a yellow flower print.
Officers never found a purse or a wallet that could have held a driver's license or a library card with her name.
Though no fingerprints could be taken from her badly decomposed body, the department worked hard on the case at the time, keeping good records, Williams said.
"When this was new, there was a lot of effort put into it," he said.
The department entered the details into NCIC and chased numerous leads.
"We go for years with nothing, and then we'll get leads all at one time," he said.
He's had about four tips in the 10 years he's been a detective.
"Prior to that, there were dozens of eliminations," he said.
'Shotgun female' Around 2:30 a.m. June 1, 1987, a 12-gauge shotgun slug blew through the front door of a North Knox County home, ripping the face off a woman raising a ruckus on the porch.
Knox County Sheriff's Office authorities speculated at the time that the unidentified woman and two male accomplices were attempting to trick and rob the resident on Jim Sterchi Road by faking a fight outside her front door.
The woman kicked the door, awakening the resident and a visitor. The resident called police and fired one shot from a shotgun when the woman attempted to open a screen door.
The two men were caught. But they were unable to identify the woman. They said they had picked her up at a Greene County rest stop just before the shooting.
Jantz, of the UT Forensic Anthropology Center, said she and her colleagues dubbed the dead woman "Shotgun Female."
The case is archived in Sheriff's Office records, and spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the department follows up on all leads on the woman's identity.
A UT forensic anthropology student generated a computer reconstruction of the woman in the early 1990s.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/may/20/unclaimed-unnamed/
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http://goo.gl/maps/j2iok Map link - Pilot Travel Center, 3624 Roy Messer Highway, White Pine, TN 37890
Jim Sterchi Rd, Knoxville, TN 37918
