Charles County investigators are still trying to identify a woman found dead in Bel Alton, Maryland, 25 years ago. No one ever reported her missing, and her killer has never been caught.
The brown box that holds all the forensic evidence in the case still reads Jane Doe.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Noelle Gehrman, deputy director of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Science Section. “We want to put a name to our Jane Doe. So, everyone is working hard to solve this case, but we need someone to come forward and tell us what they know. Somebody knows that their daughter, sister, cousin is missing. Someone knows what happened to her. We just need a little bit of information.”
The woman, believed to between 25 and 35 years old, was found nude near an abandoned home off Crane Highway June 18, 1998.
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“The property owner, she routinely checks on her property,” Charles County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Frank Tona said. “She went out and took a walk that morning and she came across the remains of this woman.”
She had a fractured skull and had been covered with brush and vegetation.
Investigators say she may have been killed somewhere else and dumped in the woods.
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“She had no distinguishable features, scars, marks or tattoos, and the only real prominent feature that she had was she did have a prominent gap between her two front teeth,” Tona said.
Images updated over the years with new technology show what the victim likely looked like when she died.
“Without knowing who she is, we have no idea where she was last seen, where she lived, who she knew at the time, who she was dating or what she did, her life. We just don’t know,” Detective Sgt. John Elliott said. “Once we find a name, we can at least have a background or a base we can work off of to go further.”
Jane Doe’s fingerprints and DNA have been run through national databases with no matches.
Investigators with the Charles County Sheriff’s Office say they won’t give up.
“As technology advances, DNA advances, we look at what methods we can apply to this case and we do everything we can, because we know something is going to work,” Gehrman said.
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