A Child, Still Unknown After 25 Years

May 3, 2008

It was a couple of guys just snooping around an abandoned apartment building in St, Louis that started it all. No one really knows what they were doing there, they told the police they were looking for a piece of pipe to repair a broken down car. That was as flimsy as story as anyone could come up with, but what they intended was meaningless because of what they found when they got there.
 
The two guys were searching the upper floors and after a fruitless search, found their way to the basement. To light the darkness, one of the prowlers lit a cigarette lighter and screamed at what he saw. It sent the two running and screaming, looking for help from the police. It was a find that continues to haunt everyone who was involved.
 
What he saw was a young African-American girl in the furnace room. She was face down, wearing only a yellow V-neck sweater. She was naked below the waist and her hands were tied behind her back with red and white nylon rope. Most disturbing, her head had been separated from her body with a large-bladed knife. The girl had been strangled to death after she had been raped. 25 years later, “Jane Doe” remains unidentified. She still haunts detectives and her head has never been found.

The yellow sweater
All she was wearing was this sweater,
red nail polish, and the piece of red
and white nylon rope that bound
her wrists.
 
The gruesome tale has another twist. There were no signs of any previous abuse, in fact, her fingernails were painted with red polish. She seemed to be otherwise healthy, well nourished and cared for. She had no deformities, scars or any other marks that indicated prior trauma, or worse, would help identify her remains.
 
The apartment building was the secondary crime scene, the murder and assault had taken place elsewhere. Her body had been hauled to the abandoned building and a blood trail indicated how she had been dragged to the basement. Detectives made a thorough search of all the school systems in the St. Louis area to attempt to identify the girl, months of searching revealed that no one was missing. At that point, detectives could only  speculate that the young girl was from out of state. The FBI made a nationwide search in an attempt to locate her family, with no results. The FBI says that, at the time, this was the only decapitation in the country involving someone this young.
 
Until 2001, anyway, when a similar case occurred in Kansas City. The decapitated body of an African-American girl was found in a wooded area. Her head had been located in a garbage bag near the location of her body but she remained unidentified. She became known as “Precious Doe,” and her case remained unsolved for four years. St. Louis detectives speculated that perhaps the killer of Jane Doe had been in prison for 18 years on some other charge, then returned to commit a similar heinous deed. That theory was dashed when Precious Doe was identified as Erica Michelle Marie Green, just 3 years old at the time of her death.  The case of Precious Doe was solved in May, 2005 which resulted in the arrest of her mother and step father. The two would have been babies at the time of the Jane Doe killing. Source: KMBC-TV Kansas City. 
 
But in St. Louis, to this day, no one has any idea who Jane Doe was. Her murderer has never been brought to justice, although several men were under investigation. No arrests have ever been made, and no one has ever come forward to claim her body, buried in a troubled cemetery near I-70 and the airport.

A non-discript grave with a donated marker
The non-descript grave in a troubled cemetery
is marked with a donated headstone.
Photo by Jennifer Silverberg
 
The River Front News reports that the detectives who were first involved in the case have retired and many of them have died. The younger, replacement detectives continue the search, however, and everyone would like to clear this case. (The RFN published an extremely thorough feature about this case in 2004. See: The Case That Haunts.)
 
Jane Doe was 4′10″  and 70 pounds, all data are estimated. Her date of birth is thought to be as early as 1972 and as late as 1975, making her 8 to 11 years old at the time of her murder. She was found wearing a yellow V-neck sweater and red nail polish. Her DNA and all known data about her are in COTIS and NCIC. With her DNA on record, detectives await the day a matching DNA hit occurs in the database.
 
St. Louis Police would like your help to bring her, and her family, the peace and justice she deserves. Authorities are all awaiting the day that someone steps forward with a missing clue. If you have any clues at all, contact us, and we will alert the proper authorities.
 
Someone, somewhere, must miss her. Who is she? Where is she from? No one seems to know, but someone, somewhere must want to know whatever happened to the girl known only as, Jane Doe.

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Related and Interesting Links:

The Doe Network: Case File 54UFMO
HFTM Thread: Headless Female Child - Found in Missouri 2-28-1983
The River Front News story: The Case That Haunts
HFTM Thread: Woman’s Headless Body Found In Detroit Manhole

Written by Ghost Writer · Filed Under Cold Cases, Missing Children, Unidentified 

Comments

One Response to “A Child, Still Unknown After 25 Years”

  1. Tailynn on December 24th, 2009 8:22 pm

    IM 15 yrs old and recently i had a vision about a youg girl that is 7 yrs and has dirty blond hair and her name is sarha if i spelled that right but shes about 4 feet tall and looks like shes about 40 ponds and last seen with a man around in his 40 he has a dirty pick up truck and she already dead she was last seen in high grasie areas and its verry dry dose anyone have any advice i really want to know who this is

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