The bare details of a murder in Loudoun County, Virginia back in 1973 have come into a vivid three dimensions.
A forensic artist has created a likeness of the victim in hopes it will help identify her.
She’s no longer an abstract. She looks like she’s about to speak. Blood-stained scraps of fabric from the 1973 murder investigation were used to recreate the vivid outfit she was wearing the day her body was discovered by farm workers near Foundry Road and Taylor Road in Lincoln, Virginia, not far from Purcellville.
The victim, a Black woman in her mid-twenties, was found shot to death on an embankment created during the Civil War for a railroad that was never built. She’d been there about two days. Her shoes were missing, but she was wearing a blue stone ring.
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News4 was there as Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman and detectives investigating the cold case saw the sculpture for the first time at the George Mason University classroom of forensic artist Professor Joe Mullins.
“This is the first time I’ve done work that’s from my backyard because I grew up in Loudoun County,” Mullins said.
The detectives described a case that began with the 2021 discovery of a single document worn thin with years.
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Lucky breaks and people with long memories helped them locate an unmarked grave at the Mount Olive Cemetery in Lincoln.
In October of 2023, they exhumed the victim. DNA extracted from her remains has been tested. There have been no matches so far, but more tests are underway.
So the hopes come down to letting Mullins bring her to three dimensions in the hopes someone somewhere remembers the face of a young woman who just disappeared in 1973.
“This one really struck a chord with me, so I couldn’t wait to get started and build that face up,” Mullins said. “And the students have become emotionally invested as well because they’ve seen her from bare skull to finished portrait.”
Mullins described the process as intense and personal.
“I was asked, ‘how do you know when to stop?’ I stop when I see someone staring back at me,” he said.
Despite the fact her DNA has already been obtained, Jane Doe cannot be re-interred under current Virginia law, which prohibits the burial of unidentified people. Loudoun County officials and the Sheriff’s office are working to get an exception or amendment to allow for a respectful re-burial.
