Someone has to know who she is, (Identified as Tawni Lee Mazzone) found 1/27/99 AZ

[lost indie]

This is an unidentified person case that has been on my mind for years,,,

someone has to know who she is...

BEWARE....the photos on the site are of a dead girl..

http://www.maricopa.gov/Medex/Unidentified/search.aspx?caseNum=99-0305

[Roamer]

I wonder if they investigated the possibility that she was not just a hitchiker. She could have been part of the family in the car she jumped out of.

She has identifying marks. You are correct. Someone has to know her. How sad, to die so young and alone.

[TigressPen]

I can't believe someone didn't report this young girl missing!! This is incredibly sad. :1222423:

[lost indie]

She doesn't look neglected or abused. Look at her eyebrows...they are almost perfect.

She's someone's daughter....maybe someone's sister or niece.

Why isn't someone claiming her?

[Roamer]

She could be a runaway and her family has no idea what state she's in. Maybe they can match her with a missing child, since she seems to be so young.

[packy]

It's so frustrating when someone has specific identifying marks and we see their picture, yet no one comes forward. Even with the news and internet not everyone sees them.

It may help to get renewed interest in her case by contacting different media outlets to request they feature her case. Here is a list of contacts.


List of contacts originally compiled by Harlett.


Larry King LarryKingLive@cnn.com

John Gibson BigStory@foxnews.com

Bill O'Reilly Oreilly@foxnews.com

Joe Scarborough joe@msnbc.com

Dan Abrams abramsreport@msnbc.com

Neil Cavuto cavuto@foxnews.com

E.D., Brian & Steve friends@foxnews.com

Shepard Smith FoxReport@foxnews.com

Geraldo Rivera AtLarge@foxnews.com

Sean Hannity Hannity@foxnews.com

Greta Van Susteran ontherecord@foxnews.com

Carol and Chad Daybreak@cnn.com

Nancy Grace NancyGrace@courttv.com

OPRAH http://www.oprah.com/email/reach/em...ach_fromu.jhtml

ABC
500 S. Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521-4551
http://www.abc.com/
netaudr@abc.com

CBS
51 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 975-4321
http://www.cbs.com/
audsvcs@cbs.com

FOX Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 900
Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900
http://www.fox.com/
askfox@foxinc.com

NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
(212) 664-4444
http://www.nbc.com/
nbcshows@nbc.com

PBS*
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 739-5000
http://www.pbs.org/

Lifetime Television (LIF)
34-12 36th Street
Astoria, NY 11106
(718) 706-3600
http://www.lifetimetv.com/


A&E Network (A&E)
235 E. 45th Street
New York, NY 10017
(212) 661-4500
http://www.aande.com/

Black Entertainment Television (BET)
1235 W Place, NE
Washington, DC 20018
(202) 608-2000
http://www.bet.com/


CNN
One CNN Center
Box 105366
Atlanta, GA 30348-5366
(404) 827-1500
http://www.cnn.com/

Courtroom Television Network (Court TV)
600 Third Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10016
(212) 973-2800
http://www.courttv.com/


Headline News
One CNN Center, Box 105366
Atlanta, GA 30348
(404) 827-1500
http://www.cnn.com/HLN/


America's Most Wanted
http://www.amw.com/contact_us/
__________________

[StickyBeak]

Thank You Packy for the List: I have tried to contact "Local" news reporters who replied, Oh that's old news now, no update. Frustrating. Re: Amy Scott, Beach haven, NJ (APP.com) her boyfriend Daniel Querzoli, She is safe, he was in jail. But, Sad part is so many listed as missing are runaways and they are immediately classified as such. Unfortunately, not always the case as we well know.
I hope that new bill gets passed with regard to no wait period. I hope to work on it.

[Tracian]

I think it was her own family that made the report. I have seen this before with a family with an infant; either that or the people that she was with murdered her family and took her along for a while and got 'rid' of her, and are hiding in plain sight.

Just my impressions, on this.

[packy]

It is sad and I'm with you, Stickybeak, about the "no wait" bill.

[packy]

I think it was her own family that made the report. I have seen this before with a family with an infant; either that or the people that she was with murdered her family and took her along for a while and got 'rid' of her, and are hiding in plain sight.

Just my impressions, on this.

Yes, we've seen things unfold this way before.

If she does have a family, our hope it that someone somewhere will see her picture and come forth.

[KindraLore]

I have tried to find out who she was before too. I have tried googling variations of her tat to see if I hit on anything (someone posting a description on a missing loved one) but I never found anything. Hard to believe no one out there is missing her.

[KittyMom]

What a beautiful young girl.

I just want to know what was going on in that car that made this young girl scared enough to jump?

[Nut44x4]

This is an unidentified person case that has been on my mind for years,,,

someone has to know who she is...

BEWARE....the photos on the site are of a dead girl..

http://www.maricopa.gov/Medex/Unidentified/search.aspx?caseNum=99-0305

I have had this girl in my unidentified folder for ages and also have wondered why she has not been claimed. This one has really bugged me for a long time too. I often check to see if there is any news on this beautiful, young girl :girl_sad:

[Roamer]

What a beautiful young girl.

I just want to know what was going on in that car that made this young girl scared enough to jump?


Exactly. How well did they check out the occupant(s) of that car???

[packy]

She jumped out for a reason and yet from what we've heard the couple she had been with didn't have any explanation either. I asked if she could be featured on the blog and that gives us another way to get her story out there.

http://helpfindthemissing.org/blog/

[Roamer]

Or they weren't telling the truth and no one checked it out.

[packy]

Or they weren't telling the truth and no one checked it out.

I believe they said they picked her up at a store. No telling where she came from originally. They never published the couple's names that I could see.

[Auburnmommyof2]

I started looking into this today. I wonder if she got the tat after she went missing. I can't bring myself to look at the photo. Is there any way to tell how old the tattoo is?

[Claudia]

I started looking into this today. I wonder if she got the tat after she went missing. I can't bring myself to look at the photo. Is there any way to tell how old the tattoo is?

The pictures are just of her face. You can't really tell how old a tattoo is unless it is brand new, and sometimes you can tell if it is older by the lines being less defined. It all depends on the quality of the tattoo, IMO.

What I want to know is what kind of medical procedure she had that made her lips look like that. How did they know she had a procedure? Did she tell the people in the car? Wouldn't some medical facility have a clue as to who she is, since they performed the procedure? If she was living on the streets, how could she afford medical care? If it was done through free medical services, it would be even easier to track. Her picture needs to be EVERYWHERE. Someone knows.

[Auburnmommyof2]

I looked at the pictures, so so sad. There are many medical procedures that could have made her lips look like that. I had upper and lower jaw surgery years ago, and that's pretty much how my lips looked for a while after. However, that particular procedure is very costly. It also involves a hospital stay ect..so someone would have known who she was. I agree, I want to know how they knew she had a procedure. I thought about botox or some kind of injection but don't know how common that was in 1999.

[Claudia]

I looked at the pictures, so so sad. There are many medical procedures that could have made her lips look like that. I had upper and lower jaw surgery years ago, and that's pretty much how my lips looked for a while after. However, that particular procedure is very costly. It also involves a hospital stay ect..so someone would have known who she was. I agree, I want to know how they knew she had a procedure. I thought about botox or some kind of injection but don't know how common that was in 1999.

Right, and would lip injections make them look like that? I wouldn't think so, not that I have ever had them or even known anyone that has!

[Auburnmommyof2]

I found a thread on another crime information site. It is speculated that she had a breathing tube just prior to her death.

[Auburnmommyof2]

I was brainstorming with my husband last night about this case. He suggested that maybe she was brought up in foster care. That may explain why she wasn't reported missing. Just a thought. I also got to thinking about the blue heart tattoo. I don't have any myself, but if I were to get a blue heart on my chest, it would probably represent the birth of a baby boy. Either given up for adoption or lost at birth. Maybe this could give us another way to look into who she is.

[Auburnmommyof2]

Here are the links to the other forums I found discussing this case. Maybe we can read through them and put together some more pieces to this puzzle.

http://www.officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=1038
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57369

[Tracian]

Yes, we've seen things unfold this way before.

If she does have a family, our hope it that someone somewhere will see her picture and come forth.


Yes, that would be my hope as well.

When I was working in the ER a couple came in with a five month old baby, the baby had a cut across the forehead, CPS was called and accepted the story that the mother was holding him, when a cup fell off a shelf, even though CPS had put her other three children in foster homes.

They walked out with that baby that night to the horror of the doctor, and the police.

Six months past, and this couple was picked up in the next state over, drug related charge, but no sign of the baby, in fact, neighbors, and LE there didn't even know that they had a baby.

The officer that was in ER that night came in and told us this, the couple have never said a word about the baby, they insist he never existed.

Children are easy to make 'disapear' by family that is evil, move to a new state, and as far as those people know, you don't have children, and a Jane/John Doe that turns up is never identified.

There is the possiblity that this girl came from a secret sect, such as the one busted up in Texas, and that is why she is not known by anyone, such as friends, or extended family.

I pray that someone will claim this child, but because she does not match any reported missing child in data banks, the chances are that she died by the hands of those who should have laid down their lives to protect her.

:1222423: may all the lost be found.

[lost indie]

Here are the links to the other forums I found discussing this case. Maybe we can read through them and put together some more pieces to this puzzle.

http://www.officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=1038
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57369

I found this on one of those sites...

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/2219dfbc.html

I've also wondered about her being a foster child.

I'd never thought about the blue heart being for a baby boy or a lost baby boy. That would make sense. Why else have a BLUE heart?

I'm telling you though...the eyebrows haunt me. They are darn near perfect. She looked pretty enough to be a model.

I've never been able to find out what she was wearing. A purse? A backpack? If she was transient she'd have something with her. If she didn't she had to have been local or had stuff in a paid-type locker.

She is the kind of girl people notice.

RIP baby...we still care and we are still looking....

:1222423:

[Nut44x4]

To me, the 'blue heart' tattoo implies a sad heart. Blue, as in sad.

[Nut44x4]

http://attempttoidentify.com/NewIMG.htm
http://attempttoidentify.com/ATICases.htm


New reconstruction photo>>

[Nut44x4]

Web site to profile unidentified bodies
Maricopa County hopes to find kin of nearly 200 unknowns


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0606bodies06.html



I hate to be a pain in the ass, lol....but could we get this thread moved to 'Who Am I' ???

[Auburnmommyof2]

I've been looking online about this case today and found some more information. WS has done some great research, seems they've found the names of the people in the car and some other interesting info.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57369&page=7

[packy]

Web site to profile unidentified bodies
Maricopa County hopes to find kin of nearly 200 unknowns


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0606bodies06.html



I hate to be a pain in the ass, lol....but could we get this thread moved to 'Who Am I' ???

You're not a pita. You are being very helpful. Thank you.

[packy]

I've been looking online about this case today and found some more information. WS has done some great research, seems they've found the names of the people in the car and some other interesting info.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57369&page=7

Thanks, AuburnMommy. A lot of information there. They show an article that says she wore a necklace with a ring tht had the initials DMA. If that is true, it's an important clue.

[til_they_are_home]

According to everything I have on this girl, which is quite a bit, the people that were driving the car, stated that they believed that she was a hooker. Now I don't buy that unless she had a VERY high income. She was simply too well groomed. Also, a theory that LE pursued for awhile was the idea that she was heading home, seeing as how the freeway that they were on and the direction they were going led to California. California has a very high number of missing and unidentified. Also the marks around her mouth are from emergency treatment to try to save her life. She was not dead when she was found. SHe lived, unconscious, for a day or two before finally succumbing to her injuries.

[Roamer]

Thank you for the additional information.

I don't think, at her very young age, she was a high priced hooker. And I still think the people in the car should have been investigated more thoroughly.

[Auburnmommyof2]

In researching this case, I've found 3 different forums with people investigating this case. I don't want to step on anyone's toes or offend anyone but I think if we all join forces, we could do alot more. How should I go about linking all the information?

[SigmaHeart]

I am not sure this is appropriate, but I thought of a way online to kind of put out a flyer for people to view cases like hers. I made a youtube account and made a video about her case. So if anybody is browsing, they can find the page and read about it, and pass it on to other people.

Her case (go to the URL and go to the side bar for the description of how to contact the person in charge of her case, her physical information, along with other.): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeGSQfQxJlY

I'll try and get other people's files up on there as much as I can muster.

[Roamer]

Would you please give us a link? Thanks.

[Auburnmommyof2]

Here are the other two, I'll post this one on their's.

http://www.officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?t=1038

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=139

[SigmaHeart]

http://www.youtube.com/user/HelpGetMeHome

That's the main page. You can get to the movie from there.

[Roamer]

Thank you both for the links!

[til_they_are_home]

I was just kicking in my 2 cents worth. I did contact Pinal County AZ LE about her myself a few months ago. I was confused cuz some places it says that she had facial scarring and some places it says that she had no scars only marks from treatment. According to the detectives, the marks on her face are definitely from ER treatment.

[packy]

Thanks for that clarification, Til They are Home. It's so hard to believe that no one has identified her yet.

[mafitz]

The blue heart on her chest could well be a jail type tattoo. It is where you use pen ink to make a tattoo, and is very popular when you are locked up in Juvie or Jail.

Been there done that, but thankfully I have a really bad fear of needles. The problem is that they have no way of knowing if she really started in Phoenix. Prostitutes there will just jump in the car with people, but not to leave the area. They are just aggressive.

I have always thought she was linked to fostercare because the system down there really doesn't do anything to keep track of you once you reach a certain age. They call you in as a runaway though, and then if you just happen to get run by the police, they take you on to juvie. So, that would rule out the fostercare angle.

They had to have run her prints, so if she was locked up it would have come up, but the tattoo being a blue heart sounds like it was homemade with a pen. If she would have had children before they would have picked that up in the autopsy.

I have had to jump out of a moving car before after hitchiking and accepting a ride from the wrong kind of person, and that has always been what I thought happened with her. He would not pull over for her, and jumping out was the only way to get away from him. Pinal County is way out Apache Junction, Casa Grande, Florence area. It is about 2 hours North of Phoenix if memory serves me correctly.

She might have been on the streets long enough to identify a threat and had they pushed her out she would have fought for her life. Grabbing at the door, taking hair, skin, fabric from the car with her, and that would have been under her fingernails.

I am really glad that more people are searching the databases to give her a name. I saw her case for the first time a couple years ago and would really like to see her case get closure.

I wonder because she was so young if she could have been a Mail Order Bride? If that is why they have had no leads on her.

[Nut44x4]

That is an interesting thought.......mmmmm.....

[Auburnmommyof2]

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64866&page=14
I just wanted to let ya'll know there is some new awesome information and ask you to check it out and see if anyone can help. A WS member got a copy of the police report and it opens up a lot of new avenues to help.

[Claudia]

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64866&page=14
I just wanted to let ya'll know there is some new awesome information and ask you to check it out and see if anyone can help. A WS member got a copy of the police report and it opens up a lot of new avenues to help.

Thanks for that link, I am registered there, but only go over occasionally & i don't think i have ever posted there. This girl haunts me for some reason.

[Nut44x4]

This sounds very promising. I was a member at WS several years ago. For some reason my ID/PW no longer work, but I still read there often. Most are very nice peeps.

[packy]

Apparently she has been identified as Tawni Lee Mazzone according to information at Websleuths. Can't find any link to a confirmation yet, but this is such good news that she can be finally brought home. Kudos to all those at Websleuths and all over who worked to help find who she is.

Hoping some more news will eventually come out about this young girl who may now rest in peace. My condolences to her family and friends.

[packy]

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2008/08/cold_case_girl_99305_miraculou.php

We led the story with an in-depth description of case number 99-305, a teenage girl who died January 27, 1999, after tumbling out of a speeding car on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Casa Grande.

Word came to us a few minutes ago that 99-305 has been identified as Tawni Lee Mazzone

[lost indie]

her picture...

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69385

rip baby...

:1222423:

[Claudia]

OMG, finally! I can't believe it. I thought she'd never be ID'd. Now I want to know her story....

She was so beautiful. :cray:

[Nut44x4]

WOW..this is fantastic news!! For so long I have carried this beauty in my 'unidentified' folder. Nice job WS!
May she now rest in peace.
http://www.maricopa.gov/Medex/Unidentified/search.aspx?caseNum=99-0305
marked as SOLVED case 99-0305

[Nut44x4]

Tawni:1187603408.CR.Mothe

[Nut44x4]

posted at city-data forum>> by phenolred
I am THRILLED to Announce that this Unsolved Mystery has been solved

Maricopa Jane Doe has been identified. Rest in Peace, Tawni Lee Mazzone - Jane Doe no more. DOB 9/3/1981 she was 17 years old and had been missing 5 days when she died

This case was solved in part due to a thread at City Data ( posted in Arizona Phoenix area which lead the family to Websleuths ( where I am also a member)

Any of you that are interested in helping give John & Jane does back their names cold cases etc check us out the more people helping the better chance of these cases getting solved

Thank YoU city data for providing a place for me to post this type of thing now Tawni can be reunited with her loving family who never gave up on finding her.

RIP Tawni

Phoenix PD would not take a missing person's report which is why there was none on file.

Tawni actually left her mother's home 5 days prior to 1/26/1999-during the weeks that followed mom sat in a vigil out side of Tawni's friends houses and schools, desperate for sight of her child.
:1187603408.CR.Mothe

As you can imagine the family is heartbroken and they are in my thoughts and prayers.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/people-search/368695-do-you-recognize-girl-az-1999-a.html

[:+:MrTT:+:]

[I]just had to leave a comment here......was doing some searching, browsing........when i came upon this.........i don't have the words to express my wonderful shockness.........in the closure you help bring to this family............but i do know this......God has special place in his heart, and his heaven........for those whom help his angels get home.........what a wonderful, spiritual job......you all have done......it is truly amazing, and restores ones believe.......that the human race still has its moments of shinning in the eyes of GOD........./I]

[Nut44x4]

Tawni Mazzone's family finally has closure, nine years after she disappeared

Published on August 28, 2008

The tragic and mysterious case of 99-305 was ice cold for nine years. Until last week.

What unfolded over a matter of mere hours last Wednesday and Thursday amazed police detectives and others to whom investigative twists and turns are the norm.

But it really happened.

On August 20, someone at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office referred area resident Mike Mazzone to the Unidentified Persons Bureau at the county's Medical Examiner's Office.

He was looking for his long-lost little sister, Tawni.

By all accounts, Mazzone is not particularly Web savvy, which is why neither he nor family members knew that the medical examiner has a Web site right up the alley he was looking.

The agency's Unidentified Persons Bureau is the one-person operation of investigator Suzi Dodt ("Cold Case," July 18, 2008). It includes a site with detailed information about the 200 or so unidentified dead people whose remains have been found in the county since 1973.

Tawni Lee Mazzone disappeared in January 1999, shortly after running away from her mother's home in Phoenix. Family friends and others had reported sightings of the 17-year-old in the weeks after her disappearance, but Tawni never turned up.

A receptionist at the Medical Examiner's Office instructed Mazzone over the phone how to view the agency's Web site, which he did.

The first case he saw was 99-305, which included a morgue photo of a young woman who died on January 27, 1999, a day after she fell or was pushed out of a Cadillac speeding east on Interstate 10 near Casa Grande.

Mazzone saw the haunting postmortem photo of the girl and immediately knew it was his beloved sister. He also saw a close-up photograph of a small, blue tattoo depicting a heart near the girl's chest, another clincher as to her identity.

Stunned, he contacted family members for advice on the next step. An uncle surfed the Net and came upon a site called websleuths.com, which includes forums on true crimes and on the missing and/or unidentified.

Back in October 2006, someone named Reb had introduced 99-305 to the site with the message, "Okay, here's a new puzzle for you sleuthers to chew on."

The case has struck a chord ever since, with dozens of people on websleuths spending endless hours, in thousands of posts, speculating on 99-305's identity.

On the night of August 20, Tawni Mazzone's aunt from Massachusetts e-mailed a websleuths moderator from Georgia named Christine Jones. The aunt reported that "Maricopa Jane Doe," as websleuths were calling 99-305, was Tawni Mazzone.

The aunt, whose first name is Tammy, then spoke on the phone with another websleuther whose screen name is Believe09 (a homemaker from Massachusetts), who had become obsessed with putting a name to 99-305.

Tammy revealed that her niece was a native of Lynn, Massachusetts — a troubled teen who bounced between her divorced parents, finally landing in Phoenix with her mother in the fall of 1998.

About 9 that night, someone who claimed to be Tawni's cousin wrote on the site, "We never knew she was killed. We thought she just ran away and still, to this day, avoided contacting anyone. It is a complete shock and it's very tough for everyone in my family."

Early the next morning, Christine Jones — the websleuths moderator in Peachtree City, Georgia — posted a message on the site that said, "We are 99.5 percent sure that we know who she is . . . OMG, I am reeling."

Believe09, her colleague from Massachusetts, sent a detailed message to Suzi Dodt in Phoenix, including the information that Tawni's former dentist in Massachusetts just had turned over the girl's dental records and X-rays to Aunt Tammy.

Dodt responded, asking Believe09 to fax her a copy of the dental charts and to put the originals of the X-rays in the overnight mail.

While waiting for the fax, Dodt contacted Mike Lancaster, a detective with the Gila River Police Department in Sacaton, Arizona.

Lancaster is a skilled detective whose work was instrumental in the 2005 apprehension on the reservation of murder suspect Samantha Somegustava ("The Case of the Fatal Femme," March 9, 2006).

Earlier, Lancaster had taken on the task of trying to identify 99-305 after visiting Dodt's Web site. He'd noted that the girl had tumbled to her death on a portion of Interstate 10 located on tribal ground, and decided to reinvestigate the case.

"I saw this pretty young girl's photo and told myself that, in this day and age of the Internet and everything, there just had to be a way to get her ID'd," Lancaster said last Sunday.

Working on his own time, Lancaster in recent weeks coincidentally had dug up critical new pieces of information:

Most important, he learned that the name of the driver of the Cadillac was William Walker, not Alonzo Fernandez. The latter was the name that the man had given police after being detained in 1999. (How Walker kept his true identity from authorities throughout his entire criminal proceedings is fodder for another story.)

Walker spent about four months in the Pinal County Jail in 1999 before a judge sentenced him to time served and a long probation term after he plea-bargained to one felony count of leaving the scene of an accident. He soon disappeared, and a county judge issued a warrant for his arrest, which he evaded until the Alameda (California) Sheriff's Office arrested him a few weeks ago on unrelated charges.

Lancaster had uncovered Walker's real name after tracking down the other person in the Cadillac that night in January 1999: Spokane, Washington resident Lindsey DeJong, who hadn't been charged.

DeJong repeated a story similar to what she'd told police in 1999 — that the young girl, whose name she allegedly couldn't remember — had leapt from the Cadillac on the freeway after Walker wouldn't pull over and let her out.

"Based on what [DeJong] told me, I believe that Walker was trying to turn Tawni into a prostitute and that they were on their way to a truck stop in Eloy or someplace near there," Lancaster told New Times on Sunday. "Lindsay said she tried to grab her by her feet, but she just went out the window, and William wouldn't stop to help her. It was a very cold-blooded act on his part. She was just a piece of meat to him."

(Police had stopped the Cadillac on I-10 about 20 miles east of the tragic scene after passersby called in.)

William Walker waived extradition from California to Arizona, to await disposition of his 1999 probation-violation case. He did so just days before the dizzying series of events that was about to end with the formal identification of 99-305.

Walker is being held without bond in the Pinal County Jail.

Last Thursday afternoon, authorities at the Medical Examiner's Office confirmed that dental and fingerprint records of Tawni Mazzone matched those of the girl long known as 99-305.

The news was bittersweet to the "many good souls," as Detective Lancaster puts it, involved in trying to identify her, including the websleuthers, the detective himself, and, of course, her family.

"I have no explanation for how things just came together almost overnight after so many years," Lancaster says. "I'm not even going to try to figure that out. It's pretty amazing."

Several of Tawni's family members flew to Arizona over the weekend. Her brother Mike and her father installed a shrine at I-10 milepost 173 as a tribute to her memory.

Suzi Dodt is trying to learn where Tawni was buried, though it probably was at the county potter's field, at White Tanks Cemetery in the West Valley.

Without Dodt's Web site, which she created a few years ago, the odds of Tawni Mazzone ever having been identified would have been very long.

"I am so relieved that she has finally been given back her name," Dodt says. "Now I know a bit about her life, I have met her family, and I know that she was very loved."

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-08-28/news/tawni-mazzone-s-family-finally-has-closure-nine-years-after-she-disappeared/1

[Nut44x4]

A roadside memorial to Tawni Lee Mazzone