Crime Junkie - UNIDENTIFIED: St. Louis Doe // Beth Doe

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Two different people have one terrible thing in common: they were both brutally murdered but despite evidence left at the scene no one has been able to identify them in decades, leaving many still wondering who they are and what really happened to them. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/unidentified-st-louis-doe-beth-doe 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Brett. And today, I want to tell you two stories about two different people with one terrible thing in common. They were both murdered, likely far from their homes, driven to strange locations, and tossed aside without even having the dignity of their own names. Both of these cases echo through the local history in Pennsylvania and Missouri, and many still wonder who they are and what really happened to them. In telling you about these notorious slangs, we're hoping that maybe someone out there

will hear these stories and recognize something familiar, because one of you could hold the key to finally bringing them home and bringing their killers to long-deserved justice. These are the stories of Beth Doe and a St. Louis Jane Doe. On Monday, December 20, 1976, in Kidder Township out in eastern Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old boy named Kenneth decides to go for a walk around like 4.30 in the afternoon. The Lehigh River runs near his house, and he's within walking distance of a state park if he wants to go that far. But Kenneth doesn't get very far along the river bank.

He's only, like, maybe 150 yards away from his house, near a bridge, when he looks in the grass and gets the worst shock of his life. There, laying in the grass, is a woman's head, her naked upper torso, her upper thighs, and what looks like an almost full-term female fetus. Oh my god. Naturally Kenneth freaks out. He runs home right away and gets his older brother Richard to show him what he's found. And I'm almost guessing, like, I'm sure people are like, why don't you just call the police

or whatever? But I'm sure this is, like, did I imagine this? This can't be real. Maybe it's something my older brother can explain. Oh, my eyes just, like, playing tricks on me. What is this? Right. I can't imagine coming across that.

But once Richard confirms it is real, and he's not just losing it, they dash home to notify law enforcement. According to Bill Berry's reporting in the standard speaker, when the police get to the scene, it's even worse than they'd imagined. The woman's nose and ears have been sliced off, and in addition to cutting the fetus out of her body, whoever did this also took her breasts. Oh my god. But there's even more at the scene, because police also find three suitcases, two in the

woods nearby, and one more about 30 feet away, right there on the Snowy River Bank. They're all the same size. Two of them are this, like, blue vinyl with a red, white, and blue stripe on one section. And the sides, interestingly, are, like, spray-painted black. And the other suitcase is blue plaid with brown trim. And two of these have already broken open, but the third one is still closed. And all three suitcases have their handles cut off. My first thought here is the handles would have had fingerprints, so maybe they were

cut off to conceal them? So that's what I was thinking, too. But as I was reading some online forums, some people were saying that often what happens to suitcases in retail that don't get sold is, apparently, it's common practice to kind of destroy them, to spray-paint them, to make them unusable so people can't go, like, dumpster diving for stuff that just didn't sell, if that makes sense. Okay, yeah. So, like, you know, there's something cool and nice and new, but spoiler alert, it's

actually ruined. Right. Once police open the third suitcase, it becomes all too clear that their grisly discoveries aren't over yet, because inside, they find the woman's hands, her feet, and the lower parts of her legs all wrapped in newspaper. Oh, my God. There's also straw and dry packing foam, and several pieces of what looks like a cut-up bedspread.

It's this dirty, orange-y, pinkish, Chanel thing with embroidered yellow flowers. Now, even though she is missing her breasts, her ears, and her nose, there's no sign of those things around. And the newspaper wrapped around her limbs is too waterlogged to make out a date or even a paper name right away. While the woman and her unborn baby are being transported a half hour away for autopsy, police scour the riverbank for any clues about her identity. While they don't find anything, they do come up with the theory that the suitcases were

tossed off of the overpass, which is, like, right above this riverbank area, by someone trying to throw them into the river. Okay. Unfortunately, there's really not a lot police can do besides just, you know, checking missing person's reports. They interview Kenneth and his family, all while they're waiting for the autopsy results to come back. According to Ron Gower's piece in The Times News Online, Kenneth tells police that he

plays in the area pretty frequently, and everything was totally normal the last time he was out there, about, like, a week before. So that means that whenever she got there, it's probably been within the last week. Like, obviously, given the temperature, it would probably slow the decomposition some, but still. Right. And once police get the autopsy results back, which is three days later, December 23rd, they learn a little bit more about their Beth Doe.

But wait, Beth? Not Jane? Like, that seems like really random to me. Why Beth? Right. It's random, but, like, it feels specific. And I wondered where her name came from. So many times when we look at these Doe cases, like, someone gives them that name or the

name is about something to do with where they were found, or the area, or what they're wearing, or maybe an idea of where they're from, even. Yeah. I never came across an answer for when she started being called Beth or who would have given her that name. But, you know, maybe it's just to have something different from Jane. I don't know how many Jane Does they had at the time. I really don't know.

So anyways, the autopsy report indicates that she'd been dead for less than a day before Kenneth found her, so 24 hours at the longest. So you're right. Oh, wow. Not only was she in there with, like, the last week, but she had just been placed there. Yeah. The medical examiner estimates she's a Caucasian woman in her late teens to early 20s, about five foot, four inches tall, and weighing about 150 pounds at the time of her death,

which mind you, would have been at the time of her death. So when she was not pregnant, she probably would have weighed less. She had shoulder length, dark hair, and brown eyes, and it's believed that she might have had a Mediterranean background. Now, she's got a couple of distinguishing characteristics. She's got two moles on her face, one above her left eye and the other on her right cheek. She also has this five and a half inch long scar on her left leg right above her heel. And there's another scar on her left calf about two inches long.

So you would think, I mean, there's a lot of identifiable markers on this woman. Yeah, those are, like, really specific things. Right. Now, the other important thing that they learned through this autopsy is they confirm that she was sexually assaulted before she died. According to the news item, Beth's official cause of death is strangulation, but this is interesting. She was also shot in the neck post-mortem, so after, yeah, very strange.

After she was dead, someone took the time to shoot her in the neck, which to me feels like someone who's super angry. Yeah, that's a clear sign of overkill. And along the lines of overkill, we know that Beth's killer dismembered her with a finely serrated knife and they actually cut out her baby girl. And again, I don't know if the dismemberment was so much fueled by anger as much as it was like a concealment thing. Yeah, trying to get her in the suitcases, I have no idea.

Now there was one clue found on our Beth Doe. On the poem of her left hand, the medical examiner finds something curious. Written on her hand are the letters W, S, R, and then there's some numbers. So there's two numbers and the first one is either like a four or a five. And then to the lower right of that, there's another number which people say is either a four or a seven. I wish I had a picture of this because I don't know how you mix up four and five, maybe four and seven.

I have no idea what it actually looks like. Okay, but even if you did, what do these letters and numbers even mean? Who knows? I mean, literally all of these years later, no one has any idea. People have wild guesses. But pretty much all that they can get from it is that they think Beth herself probably wrote it. If she did, she's probably right-handed.

But that's nothing. Yeah, it doesn't add anything to the investigation. So with not a whole lot to go on, the investigators are hoping that maybe some special analysis will give them a starting point that they so desperately need. Two days before Christmas, police announced they're calling in a dental specialist and a physical anthropologist to help them take the next steps towards identifying Beth. Two days after Christmas, this is now a week after she was found, the FBI joins forces with the local police to analyze Beth's fingerprints and to put out a nationwide call to see if

anyone might be able to give them a name or a place or anything that they don't have now. Remember, they checked missing person reports, but it was pretty localized, right? You start small and then expand out and this is the 70s. The FBI would have the largest reach to see if anyone's missing this, again, fully pregnant woman. And even beyond that, when we talk about so many dough cases, I mean, how many have we done where we're dealing with a skeleton?

Right, right. This is one where she was found within 24 hours, they think. So her face is mostly intact. Her teeth are still in her skull. And a local dentist is able to make a chart from them showing that in her lifetime, Beth did have access to dental care. She had had tooth problems growing up and several teeth had even been pulled, but it had gotten better with age, although according to the dough network, one of Beth's front

teeth was actually fractured at the time of her death and it would have been noticeable to others. So again, more like very defining characteristics that you would think someone would remember. While they're waiting to see what comes from the FBI and, you know, the fingerprints and the call-out, police have a composite sketch made that they can show the public. And this is when the public gets their first look at what Beth really probably looked like. And here, let me show you the picture that they put out. Okay, so the picture you sent me is obviously from newspaper clipping.

So it's just kind of like a grayscale sketch, but she looks like she has, you know, like this sort of chin-length hair because it's grayscale and a sketch. It looks like she has lighter hair and lighter eyes. But I know before you said that she had dark hair and dark eyes, but you also mentioned some moles, one on the left side of her face and one on the right side. But they seem to be not quite accurate based on the sketch. Yeah. And this is where I don't know what information is wrong.

So the dough network, this is so minute. I don't know if it matters, but the dough network says she has a mole on her right cheek. And this picture shows it on her left cheek. Again, not huge, but I think kind of a big deal if you're sending this out like they're planning on to outlets across the country to see if someone recognizes her. Is that like a little thing that's like, oh, the person I knew, it was on a different side. I don't know.

Right, right. So according to a piece in the standard speaker, the sketch does go out to newspapers all over the country and weeks go by. And Beth's shocking story gets a ton of publicity with the horror of her death grabbing headlines. I mean, left and right. Oh, I'm sure. But none of it brings police any closer to getting what they need most, which is her name. I mean, how are you supposed to find out who did this if you don't even know who your

victim is? Yeah, you can't even like have a starting point without that. Right. And they get another blow to the investigation when the FBI informs them that they did get her fingerprints. They were able to lift them, but they can't match them to anyone. Police also try everything they can with that letter number combo on Beth's hand. I mean, they're looking for license plate numbers, truckers, CB call signs, I mean, anything

that could even be close. But once again, they keep hitting dead end after dead end and it's driving law enforcement nuts. Like this is one of those cases that just eats away at them because it's so brutal. It's so bizarre. And again, how does this pregnant woman go missing and no one be missing her? Yeah, I mean, it really plays on your worst fears. Like not only is someone capable of this, like you said, really brutal and gruesome killing,

but they also might be capable of just getting away with it. Right. Within a year, Beth's case is going cold. But around the one year anniversary, police make what they hope is a breakthrough because they're finally able to identify the newspaper wrapped around her body parts. But wait, didn't you say the newspaper was too like soaked to get anything from it? It was. It was a mess.

But police's team kept at it. They worked hard and their hard work paid off. The paper from the crime scene is the New York Sunday News, dated September 26, 1976. According to Chris Parker in the Times News Online, the paper is linked to 11 different counties in northern New Jersey. So police are thinking that maybe the victim and or her killer is connected to that area. But even with this breakthrough, that's as far as they get. It doesn't lead them any further down the road other than maybe somewhere in New Jersey.

Question mark. And Beth's case keeps cooling off until finally it is cold. No family members come forward to claim her. And so her remains stay in the Philadelphia morgue for almost seven long years until August 19th of 83, when she and her baby are buried in the county potters field for indigent and unclaimed people. For over 20 years, through the 80s and the 90s and into the new millennium, that's where Beth does stays.

And she's largely forgotten about, except by a few locals who remember her story. What's so interesting to me, though, is looking at, say, like a Lacey Peterson case, right? And when you think about it, where her fetus, Connor, her baby, was allegedly cut out of her body, right? And like, you know, did it happen naturally? Was it actually cut out? Right. Right.

Everyone knows that story. It was like our second episode on this podcast, everyone has heard about Scott Peterson and Lacey Peterson. I always wonder why Beth didn't get even half of the attention that Lacey got. I mean, yeah, but we're also looking at, I mean, how long ago? I think it's really easy to kind of lose sight of the fact that we haven't always, even in our lifetimes, Ashley, lived in such a 24 hours news cycle, like it hasn't always been as constant and as accessible as it is right now or even 10 or 20 years ago.

Yes. That's totally true. And I do think that obviously, like, again, comparing it directly to Lacey Peterson's case, like we got to watch that case break and unfold. I was just kind of shocked, though, that I was scouring for Doe cases to like put this story together. I had never even heard of Beth Doe's case. Like this wasn't not, even me being the crime junkie, this was not something that like is

well known or came across my radar on your radar, right? Yeah. Now, in 2004, her case is assigned to a pair of Pennsylvania state police as part of the state's bid to clear cold cases. And in 2007, the decision is made to exhume her. Bob Layla reported for the morning call that Beth has to actually be dug up partially by hand so they don't risk damaging the small wooden box serving as her casket. Once she's been exhumed, Beth's remains are taken to a lab nearby so scientists can take

samples and send them off for further analysis. Part of that work is going to be done locally in Pennsylvania. Like there's a forensic artist in Pennsylvania who's going to do a new sketch of what Beth probably would have looked like. I mean, again, they had her then, but this is so many years later, they're trying to like really bring her sketch to life. But Beth's actual tissue is being sent 1500 miles away to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification In Fort Worth.

At the time in 2007, this is one of just three places in the entire country that was doing DNA analysis and matching four missing persons. Okay. So quick question. Do we know if it would be possible to send tissue samples from the fetus as well? Like maybe they can try to find a match for the baby's dad. Yes. So here's the thing about the fetus.

So the report that I have from 1983 says that it was buried with Beth. But when she was exhumed in 2007, the police can't be sure that it's there. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Perfect. Then another piece from 2014 says, yes, it was in fact there when she's reburied two days after the exhumation and Crime Stoppers Pennsylvania mentions what they call fetal

analysis. So again, not super clear, not super consistent in my source material, but it sounds to me like they do have it. One month after the exhumation, this is now late November 2007, police get their updated sketch of Beth from the artist in Philadelphia. Again, we have both of these up on our website with all of our source material if you want to check it out. But they're pretty similar, right?

Like it's not a whole lot of changes. Again, it's not like we were working off of bones here. So right, right. They're pretty consistent. It just like brings her a little more to life. Now the renewed attention on Beth's case though, that's what's interesting. That produces a ton of tips from the public. But as Jill Wallin reported for the standard speaker, the tips don't give police any solid

leads. And the DNA analysis from Texas doesn't give them any solid leads either because while the lab was able to create a profile for Beth and they were able to enter it into some databases, there are no hits, which that's what we know we need is the hits. That's the important part. According to the police on Beth's case though, this is actually helpful in its own way because it lets them rule out some possible identities. So I don't know if you guys like are super familiar with the dough network or NamUs,

but they'll actually like, these are all the people we've like compared against and we know that it's not. It's not these people so we can look other places. Exactly. So for seven more years, that's it. Beth's case is cold again, but in 2014, further scientific advancements unlock more of her secrets. So there's this professor down at the University of South Florida who uses isotope analysis

to determine that Beth was probably an immigrant from Western or Central Europe, possibly from Serbia or Croatia who came to the U.S. as a kid and had been here in the States for five to 10 years before she died. So you know I love a good rabbit hole because I love research and just like learning and knowing things in general, but honestly it just blows my mind that there is a way to literally pinpoint the exact region where someone grew up based on like the minerals in their tissue. It's wild.

I don't even understand it, but science is so cool. You guys. It's so cool because it not only just says like, oh, she's probably from here and she came to the U.S. It gets more specific saying that after she came to America, she might have lived in the Southeastern United States, possibly, I mean, they narrow it down as far as saying probably possibly Tennessee and what they can say is that the baby that she was carrying, which again makes me think that they were able to do tests, the baby she was carrying was conceived

in the States as well here in the United States. In May of 2015, this is now 39 years after she was murdered, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children puts out the most detailed reconstruction of Beth's face yet. So, Brett, this one I think is the most drastically different than the sketches if you want to take a peek. Whoa. So these sketches, one look nothing like the original sketch, like neither of them, but

the newest sketch, the reconstruction, it doesn't look anything like the first two, to be honest. Like she definitely has very dark eyes and hair and even like fuller lips. Yeah. I am floored. Like this is someone's person and the reconstruction makes you really, really feel that clearly, in my opinion at least. It's strange.

Like again, what I can't wrap my head around is if she was found so soon after her death, why are the images changing so much years later when you would think we have less information, but I don't know if they're pulling from her DNA and from her heritage or again, it's just we're not looking at newspaper clippings anymore and maybe there's something about that that brings it to life. I'm not sure, but it does look totally different than what we were looking at before, but even with this incredibly detailed and lively image and more information about her life, it still doesn't lead to anything solid.

It's super frustrating, but law enforcement holds out hope. And then over four years later in September 2019, that's when the case gets the biggest break it has seen in decades. They get a tip from someone who says they know who Beth is. And unlike other tips they've gotten saying the same thing, this one actually sounds solid. According to this tip, Beth is really a girl named Madeline Cruz, also known as Maggie. Now there's not a lot out there about Madeline, but according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, she was thought to be in the New Jersey social services system

as a preteen in the early 1970s. At some point she moved to Massachusetts and she went missing from her foster home in Framingham near Boston at the age of 16, which would have been in 1974. As Ron Gower reported for The Times News Online, there was no trace of Madeline for two years until the summer of 1976 when she called up a friend just out of the blue and told them she was pregnant and asked for some money. After that, no one ever heard from her again. CBS News Boston showed some pictures of Madeline in their report and there's definitely a

resemblance between her and Beth's reconstructions. Okay, so if Beth Doe is really Madeline Cruz, that totally erodes the theory that Beth came to us as an immigrant from Western Europe, right? Like, so much of what we thought we knew about her then just falls apart. No, it totally does. I mean, not just the belief that Beth was an immigrant, but also about where she grew up, right? Because even though we know so little about Madeline's life, the bits that we do know,

like her being in the foster system in New Jersey, her disappearing from the East Coast, like all this calls into question what we thought we knew about Beth, like could this super advanced analysis of Beth's remains really have gotten their findings so wrong? Yeah. To me, that's hard. Like for them to take this so seriously, they have to say that all the science doesn't make sense. So, I don't know, but for almost two weeks, everyone's hopes were kind of up.

They were thinking like, listen, we might know who this person is and we might know what happened to Madeline, but by September 25th of 2019, law enforcement finds the truth. Not only is Madeline Cruz not Beth Doe, but she is actually, quote, alive and well. As of early 2021, this is the most recent development in Beth's case. Web forums are packed with theories about who she could be and what happened to her. Like one theory I saw on Reddit posted that her murder was or could have been an honor killing due to her ears and nose and breasts being cut off. And we'll actually link to that thread in the sources if you guys want to go down that

rabbit hole because the responses from people of Balkan origin are super interesting. I mean, it's, again, worth looking at if you have some time to kill because you can get deep into it. Really want to go down those rabbit holes. Yeah. But now we're just left waiting. Again, I feel like I say this every time where it hasn't been done, but to me, this is one where genealogy seems such an easy win here.

Not only to identify Beth, but also her baby and her baby's father. I mean, when someone's missing like this, you know what it reminds me so much of was the Bear Brook case. Oh, for sure. And when you have like a child like that, whether the father was involved or not, knowing who the father is, again, gets you back to who your victim is, and it helps you solve the case. So I think that they have two opportunities here to identify both of their victims, right?

Beth and her baby. Oh, for sure. But I don't know if that's happening. I don't know where that stands. And while Beth's story doesn't have resolution yet, she's not the only person that I want to tell you about today. There's another tragic story that needs just as much attention. And it takes place far away from Pennsylvania, down in Missouri.

On the afternoon of February 28, 1983, in St. Louis, two men make their way into an abandoned apartment building on Clemens Avenue to try and look for some pipe material they can use to fix a broken down car. Now they don't find anything up on the main floor, so they decide to go check down in the basement where it is pitch black and freezing cold. Since they can't see anything, one of these two guys pulls out a cigarette lighter to give them a little bit of guidance, but when he flicks it on, the sight in front of him fills him with absolute terror.

Because they're in the basement, lying prone with their stomach on the floor. It's a woman's body. And even in the dim light, it's obvious that something truly terrible happened to her, because her yellow sweater is covered in blood. She's naked from the waist down, with her hands tied behind her back, with red and white nylon rope, and the most disturbing of all, she's been decapitated. And her head is nowhere to be found. These two guys are so horrified by what they've discovered that they run to call the police.

According to Bill McClellan's piece in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the police who arrive on this scene are just as horrified as these two guys who found the body in the first place. Like, we're talking hardened city cops are having a hard time compartmentalizing the gruesomeness of what they're looking at. But trying to put aside their emotions and focus on what needs to be done. This at first theorized just by looking at her that this woman might have been a sex worker. Like, maybe she was with a client, things went as bad as they could possibly go.

And they're definitely suspecting sexual assault is involved, even though they won't know for sure until the autopsy. But then, before they even get to the autopsy, they turn her body over and realize she's not a woman at all. She is a little girl. Oh my God. How did no one realize this any earlier? Because even without her head, this girl was pretty tall and she's got red nail polish

on her fingers. Again, these hands, like that's what they're seeing is nail polish and this kind of tall figure. So based on that, they assume that she was older. But when they turned her over, they see that she's not at all developed and that's when they realized the truth. Now based on all of the blood on her clothing on that yellow sweater, based on the fact that she has been decapitated, you would think that there would be blood all over the basement,

right? Yeah, for sure. So the basement's filthy because it's been abandoned for ages, but there's like no blood near her body. So police are thinking that she was actually killed elsewhere. And then her body was put here afterwards. Pretty much from the jump, news of this little girl takes over the headlines in St. Louis. During my research, I was actually able to find pretty good amount of information about

what exactly the police are doing in the early days as they try to find who's responsible for this heinous crime. But at the same time as they're hunting down a killer, they're also trying to do the most important thing. They're trying to find out exactly who their victim is. Now this is long before DNA and all of that. So what they would normally turn to are dental records, but to get dental records, you would need her head.

Exactly. And so that very same afternoon, police start scouring the building, trying to find the girl's head while her body's being transferred back to the morgue for autopsy. Police bring out floodlights. They go through all three floors. There's 24 old apartments in all. They're searching every single one of them, but there's no sign of her head anywhere. They don't even find any indication that she might have been killed somewhere else

in this building. So this is truly just a dumping site. So are police thinking that the head was taken just to prevent a positive ID, or are they considering something like a trophy situation? You know, I don't know. Nothing in my research says definitively one way or the other. The impression I get is that they're thinking it was taken to make sure she wasn't IDed. I mean, with someone so young, you don't necessarily have to worry about their fingerprints

being in a system, right? And along those same lines, what I learned was that the label was actually cut out of her sweater. So that kind of makes me think that maybe it had like a name tag in there, or even like where it was bought could have led there. And so all of this was done to make sure the victim's never identified. Yeah. And I feel like I remember people whose parents did that when we were growing up.

And I have to think that, you know, if someone cared enough about this little girl to do her nails and maybe even sew a name tag or write her name on a tag on her clothes, then they would definitely care enough to report her missing. Well, right. So that's what police are hoping. They don't know who she is day one, but they're like, someone's got to be missing this little girl, right? To your point, she's clearly cared for.

So they start going over all of the missing person reports, sure that they're going to be able to find someone who matches this like exactly how many little girls you have missing in the area. But as they're going over all these missing children reports, I mean, there's like 20 kids at the time they're listed as missing in St. Louis, none of them fit the description of a tall African American prepubescent girl like the one that they found. According to the Springfield leader and press by March the second, police have her autopsy report back from the medical examiner confirming their suspicions that little Jane Doe was sexually

assaulted. Was the medical examiner able to collect any semen from the autopsy? So I didn't see anything about semen being found inside of her, but since the victim was so young, I mean, back in the day, again, this is the 80s, I can imagine that media might not have wanted to go into super graphic detail like we get a lot of detail now, but back then they would kind of gloss over things like that. I'm honestly kind of surprised they would admit that a young girl was sexually assaulted in the papers.

Right, right. But I did find a note somewhere that there was a white substance on her stomach that law enforcement are thinking could have been semen. So I believe they collected that at the time and they didn't make mention that they also found a single pubic hair on her leg, which again, we said she's completely undeveloped. So we know that this has to belong to the perpetrator and not her. As far as the time of death, the medical examiner thinks that she'd been dead for at least two or three days.

And that because there aren't any wounds on her, like stab marks or anything like that, that she may have been strangled or potentially suffocated. Or, and the article didn't say this, this is just my own speculation, but it seems like it could have been possible that she was shot, which could have given the killer a motive to decapitate her or potentially, you know, cutting her neck. Yeah, I don't know if like they could tell the type of wound based on the way the blood was on her sweater. So I mean, I totally agree with you that that could be a reason that he felt like, you know,

he didn't want a bullet fragment he found or something that could tie back to him. But whatever they know, I think they know something we don't because everything I've seen from authorities talks about suffocation or strangulation. They also make note that based on the mold growing around the wound where her head was removed, they're estimating that it was in the basement for at least a couple of days before being found. The police have the Missouri Botanical Garden test the mold and they give some more clarity around her time of death.

So even though the Emmy initially said that she'd been dead for a couple of days, the person's results show that she'd actually been dead for around five days and she'd likely been down in the basement for two or three of those days. And as for how old she might be sources vary on her age estimations, but everything I read puts her age as somewhere between seven and 11 years old. So with this age range in mind and knowing that they can't find a missing person's report that matches this girl they found, they decide to start checking school attendance records, right?

Looking for any kids who've just stopped showing up recently, super smart. And law enforcement also starts canvassing the neighborhood, like going door to door looking for witnesses to see if anyone saw anything, but they come up with nothing in any of these, not in the schools, not in the neighborhood. So finally, they also appeal to the public hoping and praying for tips to point them in the right direction. Now a few of them look promising, like there's one woman who's a teacher and she calls police about a nine year old little black girl who'd suddenly stopped showing up for school, but

tips a dead end. Okay, but what about this little girl who stopped showing up for school? So it's a dead end, you're right, it's a dead end because she's perfectly fine. Not like anything else is going on here. Okay. Okay. I went to mom mode real fast. No, no, no.

So they find out that she just moved to another school district and her parents like just didn't notify the school. Now after this, the next thing they get, the next break they get is exactly one week after Jane Doe's body was found. An informant calls police on March 7th and says he has information about the little girl's death. A detective goes out to meet him, but before he's willing to tell them what he knows, the informant says, listen, I want a cash reward, which again, there is one being offered

at this point is up to like $900. And so he's like, if you want to know what I know, I want to make sure I get that 900 bucks first. Okay. As you can imagine, police are like, that's the opposite of how it works. Yeah, I was like, there are rules to this thing. And those are not it. Yeah.

First, you tell us what you've got. If we find out what you've got is viable, then you claim the reward. So at this point, they're kind of thinking that this guy's probably just blowing some smoke, trying to make some cash, and they would have totally disregarded him as not being credible if he'd just given up. But instead of giving up, this informant, whose name is never listed, calls someone else. He calls this civil rights group called the Congress of Racial Equality, known as core, and he tells them that he's got pictures and footage of this girl's murder.

According to another one of Bill McClellan's pieces for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, core calls the St. Louis police to tell them about this guy. And so two officers go undercover, posing as core investigators to meet with this informant. Now, keep in mind, all of this is happening seven days after she was found, like the police know time is of the essence and they are moving fast. Once again, though, the man asks for the $900, and when the two undercover cops tell him no, he gets really upset and accuses them of being undercover police officers. I mean, to me at least, it sounds like this person's concern is the cash, not the justice.

A hundred percent. And that's what police think too, and their belief only gets stronger when they take him down to the station, pull up his record, and see that he's previously been convicted of what the article I just mentioned calls stealing by deceit. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, this guy might be blowing smoke up various butts trying to get a quick payout, but he's not under arrest.

So police let him go and again, write him off. Like they deal with people like this all the time. They know who's on the up and up and who's not. Yeah. Here's the thing though, the team at core don't agree. They don't think that the police are taking this informant seriously enough. And so they decide to interview him themselves. And based on his promises to take investigators to the crime scene and the girl's head, they

give him $600. There's a ton of back and forth all day long between core and the St. Louis police. Even the police commissioner himself gets involved and winds up interviewing this informant in this total marathon questioning until finally, and around 11pm that same night, again, things are moving fast. Police actually drive out to Waterloo, Illinois, Waterloo's just across the state border and only about a half an hour away from downtown St. Louis. And according to this informant, like they're working off of his information, he says this

is where the little girl's head can be found. Oh my God. Hanging in a tree. So the police search and they search and they search. But unsurprisingly, nothing is found. Bill McClellan reported that police do another search the next day on Tuesday, March 8th. But once again, there's nothing. And by Wednesday, the informant is on tape, recanting his information and saying, surprise,

surprise, he just wanted the money. He later goes to core and says that he lied to police about lying to them. But to your point, Brett, I mean, by now everyone knows that this informant and his information is useless. Like he just wasted everyone's time. For sure. By all the publicity around this case with no solid leads, no identity and no head, eventually the case starts to cool off and by the end of the year, it is ice cold.

Little Jane Doe is finally buried on December 2nd of 1983 in Washington Park Cemetery. Even though there's nothing to go on at this point, the case stays with everyone that it's touched. Some university students raise money to buy her a headstone in 84 and the police who were in the basement that day are haunted by what they saw. I mean, they can't forget it even if they want to. Yeah. I mean, it's like how when we talked about the Smiley Face Killer, we said that, you

know, every cop and detective has that one case in their career that they get super emotionally invested in and really can never let go of. Yeah. And for multiple officers in St. Louis, this is that case for them. They are haunted by the things that they saw and they're willing to do whatever it takes to solve this. No one forgets about this. By 1994, 11 years later, police agree to try and do something a little unorthodox because

again, by now it's cold. What have we got to lose? It's kind of their thinking. Right. Right. They agree to go on this show called Sightings to see if a psychic can shed some light into this dark mystery, but in order for the psychic to get a reading, a feeling, whatever you want to call it to get their paranormal grasp on this Jane Doe, they say that they need

something of hers. And so police do something that I have never heard of before or since and something that would prove to have ripple effects on the solvability of this case for decades to come. The police decide to send off the only two things that they have that belonged to their victim, the only real pieces of evidence that they have. What? Yeah, they send the bloody yellow sweater and the nylon rope that was used to tie her hands.

Oh my God. According to Chad Garrison's reporting in the Riverfront Times, these two potentially crucial pieces of evidence, wait for it, get lost in the mail. No, and have never been found. Yeah. Now, there's one maybe potentially saving grace. While I was researching, I did come across some inconsistency about the rope being lost too.

They tend to say that both things are gone, while others say just the sweater. But either way, I mean, that is a huge piece of evidence that's just never been seen again. Yeah, like what you were saying, like these are the only two things that exist. They're crucial to this entire investigation, even if one of them is gone, let alone both of them, that's a travesty. Yeah, I think about all like the advancements we've had in technology and could we pull DNA off of them in 2020, 2021, and listen, like I'm all for police trying something new. I think that's great.

I think it's cool. But like, is there a better way than USPS? Could no one just take these critical pieces of evidence to them or have them come here? Or even just like one of them versus both of them. I have so many questions. I know. I know. I get mad about this like over and over again every time I read this and talk about this

part of the story. Like a signature confirmation. Oh my goodness. It's so easy. I know. And all in all, I'm sure you can guess how the psychic TV show goes. I mean, I'm not going to say that I'm sure about this, but let me go out on a limb. They don't solve the case.

Bingo. Cool. Now at some point between 1994 and 2004, police do get suspicious about a convicted child murderer on death row in Missouri, this guy named Vernon Brown. He's interviewed by police multiple times about their Jane Doe, but he denies having anything to do with her murder. And there's nothing to connect into the case by the time he's executed in 2005. So with the Brown angle looking like a dead end and we have no physical evidence, police

stay hopeful as technology does get better. They're hoping that maybe they're going to learn more with the physical evidence that they do still have, which is like a few and far between. Yeah, like not that much. But what I will say is by the time that that Riverfront Times article gets published in 2004, they know for a fact that the white substance on little Jane Doe's stomach isn't semen. Okay.

So what is it then? They don't say. They just say that it doesn't have DNA. So even this like one thing we thought we might have, it was like no use to us. Yeah. But okay. So you remember that pubic hair that police found on the girl's leg? Yeah.

Yeah. We do more testing. Definitely pubic hair. It's again, definitely not our victim since like I said, she had not developed. At the time, police say there's not enough DNA in the hair to point them to a killer. But they also say that it might not have come from their killer at all. It's weird how they kind of write off this hair. Instead, they're thinking and stay with me here because just like sending your evidence

to a psychic in the mail, I have never heard of this next thing either. They're thinking that maybe this hair, this pubic hair came from an officer at this scene. I swear I'm not making this up, but their theory is that this pub fell off of a cop onto a murder child's leg. I didn't respond initially because I was just blinking into the void because I cannot believe this. Right. What?

Are detectives processing crime scenes in the nude now and I just didn't know about it yet? Like I have so many questions as to like the point A to point B of this situation. You should have seen my face when I was researching this case. Like obviously the questions I have are, okay, did the officers on the scene give samples for comparison to make sure that's not what happens seems like that'd be pretty easy. Was the hair ever retested? And TPD on answers to all of that because none of it's been reported.

It seems like everyone's fine just being like, could be a cops. We don't have any evidence. We don't know. Who knows? Let's just like, again, we don't have a ton of physical evidence, but let's just ignore this one piece that we do because who knows? Oh my goodness. I don't know.

On a much more realistic note, by 2004, Little Jane Joe's DNA was collected, processed and entered into the FBI's CODIS system. Now nothing in my research says how they got this DNA, but I'm thinking that potentially they kept a sample before she was buried knowing that DNA was like something in its infancy back in the 80s and it could be helpful to them later, but I don't know for sure. As DNA technology continues to advance through the 2000s, police, including some of the original detectives on the case who are, again, still carrying this girl's memory with them, decide to exhume her body for new testing.

And they also give her a better resting place, but when they go to the Washington Park Cemetery in November of 2012, they run into a huge problem. The girl isn't in her grave. What? According to Christine Byer's piece in the St. Louis Post Dispatch in March of 2013, the Washington Park Cemetery is a mess, been super neglected for the past 20 years or so. It's overgrown, old graves are breaking open, multiple bodies are buried in a single plot. Oh my God.

The record keeping is a nightmare, and to make matters even worse, the headstone from back in 84, the one that people raised money to pay for, didn't even go on the right grave. Yet the article isn't all doom and gloom though, because it does shed some light on how much more advanced the case's clues have gotten, even without the sweater and the rope and the whatever that we had that's now gone. So what do you mean? Well they've got her mitochondrial DNA, which is her maternal lineage DNA. Again, I don't know exactly how they got this sample or where it came from, but she's already

in CODIS and NamUs' database, so which is great. We're so close, but no matches have turned up so far. It takes over seven months of hard work from police and volunteers before they finally find little Jane Doe's grave in June of 2013. Researchers from all over the country come to Missouri to analyze her body for any new clues about who she might be or where she came from, and according to another one of Christine Byer's pieces, they actually make some progress. Stable isotope analysis looks at the minerals in her bones.

You talked about this in the previous case, right, and how they're impacted by drinking water and everything in our surroundings. So based on the makeup of this doe's bones, they can tell that she probably lived most of her life in any of the 10 states in the southeast, but interestingly, none of which are Missouri where she was found. Which that might explain why no one locally ever reported her missing, and when they were looking at kids who suddenly stopped showing up to school, she wasn't in that sort of classification or roster.

Right. So are they thinking that she was taken from somewhere else, like her and maybe even her killer could have just been passing through the area? Well, the prevailing theory doesn't 100% align with them both being from out of state. You see, that building where her body was found is a ways away from interstates and like major highways. So police are speculating that even if she wasn't local, they really believe that her killer was.

So did he go and abduct her or take her in some way and bring her there? Was she somehow in the area alone? It seems unlikely, but we have almost no way of knowing. Right. Little Jane Doe is eventually reburied in St. Louis in February of 2014, this time in the Garden of the Innocence at Calvary Cemetery. In September, 2020, it was announced that her case has been reopened by the St. Louis Cold Case Unit in the hopes of finally finding justice for her once and for all.

I don't know what they're doing. Again, I don't know if genealogy is coming into play here, but it's interesting that they're taking a fresh look because no matter how much time has passed, she and Beth still deserve their names and their true stories and a real conclusion to their story of where they came from and who needs to answer for what happened to them. So if you have any information about Little Jane Doe of St. Louis, you can call the St. Louis Police's Homicide Unit at 314-444-5371. And if you know anything about our Beth Doe out in Pennsylvania, please call the Pennsylvania

Crime Stoppers at 1-800-4-PA-TIPS. You can find all of our source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?