DNA Test Finally Solves Cold Case Mystery After 52 Years
It was just a normal January day in Mohave County, Arizona. It was 1971, and three friends were out hunting in the desert when they came across something strange. There was a sack lying on the ground in front of them. They went over to investigate and looked inside. But its contents were far more terrible than they could have ever imagined: they’d found a body. Who was this person? And what had happened to them? Unfortunately, the answers to those questions wouldn’t come for more than 50 years.
Mohave Jane Doe
The body inside the sack, it turned out, belonged to a woman. She was found pretty close to a dirt road roughly 30 miles from a desert town called Kingman. The identity of the deceased woman was a mystery — which is how she came to be known as “Mohave Jane Doe.”
A potential clue
The sack containing Mohave Jane Doe was white, made from material woven together loosely and bound shut using a little rope. On its side was some green text. It read, “Deer-Pak Ames Harris Neville Co.” That might initially have seemed like a promising clue, but nothing ultimately ever came of it.
The clothes
There were a bunch of clothes found with the body, too, which might initially have been expected to prove useful in helping to identify the deceased. There were two blouses — one black, and one multicolored with long sleeves — orange pants, bobby socks, black boots, and brown driving gloves. Yet all these details came to nothing, in terms of the investigation.
Physical description
More details eventually emerged about the deceased woman. She was thought to have been between 35 and 40 years of age, white, and 5’4” in height. Her weight was estimated to have been in the 125-140-pound region. She’d had curly, brown hair, which was showing some signs of graying.
