New DNA testing could help identify ‘Jane Doe’ killed in 1993 in southwest Missouri

JASPER COUNTY, Mo. — A 30-year-old cold case in Southwest Missouri has grabbed the attention of DNA researchers, who are now trying to uncover the identity of a “Jane Doe” who died after being struck by a vehicle near Interstate 44.

An accident during the early morning hours of December 21, 1993, claimed the life of an unknown woman, after she was hit by a truck on the eastbound on-ramp of Interstate 44 at the Missouri-Oklahoma line.

"She didn't have any identification with her. There were a few items in her purse, a few leads that the highway patrol tried to follow up on at the time, but it didn't ever lead to any viable indication of who she was,” said Jasper County Records Center Director, Annie Golden.

Four days after the accident, the woman known simply as "Jane Doe” died on Christmas Day in a Joplin hospital.

“She is buried in a grave down in Stone Cemetery which is down on the southern border of Jasper County. Someone was kind enough to donate a burial plot for her and a headstone," said Golden.

In 2008 Jane Doe's body was exhumed after a family in Tennessee thought she might be their missing loved one.

"She was not a match to the Jane Doe they were looking for, but they did maintain the samples that they took when they exhumed her,” said Golden.

Recently, Jane Doe captured the attention of anthropologists at Southeast Missouri State University.

"I noticed the NamUS, National Missing and Unidentified Persons system entry for this Jane Doe and I was trying to find some information online and it occurred to me, I was like, 'maybe I'll reach out to the county archivist,” said Southeast Missouri State University, Professor of Anthropology, Jennifer Bengtson.

In February of this year, Professor Bengtson contacted Jasper County Records Center Director, Annie Golden who then spent months searching for information related to Jane Doe. The information gathered was sent to Bengtson, along with some of the remains.

"They still had those bones that they had retrieved those years ago, so we're retesting them,” said Bengtson.

The bones will undergo new methods of DNA testing at the university's anthropology lab and then be sent to a world-renowned forensic lab in Texas for further study. All of this to give Jane Doe an identity.

"That would be marvelous, to put a name on that headstone,” said Golden.