Identified! NJ - Blairstown, Cedar Ridge Cemetery, 'Princess Doe', WhtFem 14-18, 36UFNJ, peacock skirt, Jul'82 - Dawn Olanick *charges*

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Julie61 said:
I found her father's obit. It lists survivors as his wife, a son, and another daughter, but not Dawn. I'm sure it's the right person because all the information lines up. So not only was she never reported missing, but the family wrote her out of existence. No one could identify her because no one reported her missing. Poor thing.
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Is the wife listed Dawn's mom? Is that who she was living with when asked to leave - or perhaps her mother is someone else? It seems he married the woman in the obituary when Dawn was 15. If you search through her facebook (she has 3) she posts that she lost her daughter and husband to leukaemia. But the daughter posted in the father's obituary doesn't appear to be dead....

EBM: I found an article that says her parents were divorced, so it's not her mom. Apparently she was living with her mom and sister when she was asked to leave: After Four Decades, Prosecutors Identify Murder Victim 'Princess Doe' and Name Her Alleged Killer

Just heartbreaking.
 
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So Dawn was asked to leave her mom's but probably didn't feel she could go to her father's? This case really hits home to me. When I was 11 my parents divorced and I wanted to be with one parent. This upset the other parent who told me to pack my suitcase and go. When I got to the other parent, they wouldn't even answer the door. I sat at the beach seriously contemplating suicide at that young age. I went back to the original parent who then threw me out again at 17 when I reported a family member for abuse. I asked a relative to stay with her and she said no because I upset the family by it. I then lived in a horrible homeless flat, or with friends, before eventually moving in with a violent man for somewhere "safe" to stay, and later became homeless again when I left his violence. Fortunately I was able to pick myself back up with an AMAZING woman's support service and I'm now in my own safe, secure home but the wounds will always be there and I cannot ever forgive my family. My heart breaks for Dawn who didn't have anywhere safe to go through no fault of her own but is it weird I feel a sense of pride knowing she fought against Kinlaw and still knew she was worth more than being sold into prostitution? You're so vulnerable in that situation but it sounds like she was so strong.
 
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JennyJukes said:
Is the wife listed Dawn's mom? Is that who she was living with when asked to leave - or perhaps her mother is someone else? It seems he married the woman in the obituary when Dawn was 15. If you search through her facebook (she has 3) she posts that she lost her daughter and husband to leukaemia. But the daughter posted in the father's obituary doesn't appear to be dead....

EBM: I found an article that says her parents were divorced, so it's not her mom. Apparently she was living with her mom and sister when she was asked to leave: After Four Decades, Prosecutors Identify Murder Victim 'Princess Doe' and Name Her Alleged Killer

Just heartbreaking.
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So interesting... And confusing, lol. Thank you for clarifying that her dad must have gotten married a second time. Dawn had a brother and a sister, and from their ages I believe they all must have been from her dad's first wife, which still makes me wonder why she wasn't included in his obit. I wonder why she and her sister were living with their mom, but brother was living with dad and new wife. And was Dawn the only one asked to leave her mom's?

Dawn and her brother are both listed in their high school yearbook in 1981. I'm assuming she was a junior that year. Only she is listed in the 1982 yearbook, when she was a senior. So either her brother graduated in 1981 or changed schools after that year.
JennyJukes said:
So Dawn was asked to leave her mom's but probably didn't feel she could go to her father's? This case really hits home to me. When I was 11 my parents divorced and I wanted to be with one parent. This upset the other parent who told me to pack my suitcase and go. When I got to the other parent, they wouldn't even answer the door. I sat at the beach seriously contemplating suicide at that young age. I went back to the original parent who then threw me out again at 17 when I reported a family member for abuse. I asked a relative to stay with her and she said no because I upset the family by it. I then lived in a horrible homeless flat, or with friends, before eventually moving in with a violent man for somewhere "safe" to stay, and later became homeless again when I left his violence. Fortunately I was able to pick myself back up with an AMAZING woman's support service and I'm now in my own safe, secure home but the wounds will always be there and I cannot ever forgive my family. My heart breaks for Dawn who didn't have anywhere safe to go through no fault of her own but is it weird I feel a sense of pride knowing she fought against Kinlaw and still knew she was worth more than being sold into prostitution? You're so vulnerable in that situation but it sounds like she was so strong.
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Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry you went through that at such a young age. I'm glad you survived, and I hope you are thriving now. I hope you can forgive some day, for your own sake, but anger does have it's motivating power and often does keep one safe. I was never kicked out but did suffer emotional and psychological abuse and no longer have a relationship with my parents, so I do understand. I agree Dawn was one strong girl and I'm proud of her too.
 
landis said:
The different spelling of Oleynik doesn't make much sense to me. Polish spelling of Oleynik is Olejnik, you read it the same way as with y. There is, though, plenty of people in Poland with the last name Olanicki/Olanicka, so my theory still is that they "cut off" the end to make it easier to pronounce/less confusing.
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There is also a NBA basketball player, who played college ball for Gonzaga, named Kelly Olynyk.
 
landis said:
Her surname sounds Polish. It could've been something along the lines of Olanicki at first, but because this kind of a surname ends in -ki for men and -ka for women, it might've been shortened to just Olanick to avoid the confusion or something.
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If they were in fact Polish, it was probably indeed Olanicka.

It could also have been misspelled by some half-literate immigration clerk, however - for instance, from "Ołanik" or something similar.

When the famous composer Bronisław Kaper fled the rising nazism and came to USA, some clodpate clerk mangled his name as "Bronislau" and wrote it down so. Rather than fight him, Kaper just waved his hand, and, for the rest of his life in USA, he remained "Bronislau", a name which does not exist.
 
RaspberryMama said:
So interesting... And confusing, lol. Thank you for clarifying that her dad must have gotten married a second time. Dawn had a brother and a sister, and from their ages I believe they all must have been from her dad's first wife, which still makes me wonder why she wasn't included in his obit. I wonder why she and her sister were living with their mom, but brother was living with dad and new wife. And was Dawn the only one asked to leave her mom's?

Dawn and her brother are both listed in their high school yearbook in 1981. I'm assuming she was a junior that year. Only she is listed in the 1982 yearbook, when she was a senior. So either her brother graduated in 1981 or changed schools after that year.

Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry you went through that at such a young age. I'm glad you survived, and I hope you are thriving now. I hope you can forgive some day, for your own sake, but anger does have it's motivating power and often does keep one safe. I was never kicked out but did suffer emotional and psychological abuse and no longer have a relationship with my parents, so I do understand. I agree Dawn was one strong girl and I'm proud of her too.
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Are her photos in the yearbooks?
 
FrankieFalzon said:
If they were in fact Polish, it was probably indeed Olanicka.

It could also have been misspelled by some half-literate immigration clerk, however - for instance, from "Ołanik" or something similar.

When the famous composer Bronisław Kaper fled the rising nazism and came to USA, some clodpate clerk mangled his name as "Bronislau" and wrote it down so. Rather than fight him, Kaper just waved his hand, and, for the rest of his life in USA, he remained "Bronislau", a name which does not exist.
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There's no "Ołanik" lastaname in Poland.
 
I feel there is so much more to the story that we do not know
If Dawn never ran away or "rebelled", why was she kicked out? Maybe it was a similar story to Jenny Jukes. Dawns father remarried two years before Dawn was kicked out. Maybe she wanted to leave mom and live with him and the new wife but dad and the new wife had already moved on? Or Dawn wanted to hitchhike there and on the way fell prey to the Kinlaws and never made it to dad who may not even have known she was kicked out?


I feel we are missing lots of pieces here.

Jmoo
 
JennyJukes said:
So Dawn was asked to leave her mom's but probably didn't feel she could go to her father's? This case really hits home to me. When I was 11 my parents divorced and I wanted to be with one parent. This upset the other parent who told me to pack my suitcase and go. When I got to the other parent, they wouldn't even answer the door. I sat at the beach seriously contemplating suicide at that young age. I went back to the original parent who then threw me out again at 17 when I reported a family member for abuse. I asked a relative to stay with her and she said no because I upset the family by it. I then lived in a horrible homeless flat, or with friends, before eventually moving in with a violent man for somewhere "safe" to stay, and later became homeless again when I left his violence. Fortunately I was able to pick myself back up with an AMAZING woman's support service and I'm now in my own safe, secure home but the wounds will always be there and I cannot ever forgive my family. My heart breaks for Dawn who didn't have anywhere safe to go through no fault of her own but is it weird I feel a sense of pride knowing she fought against Kinlaw and still knew she was worth more than being sold into prostitution? You're so vulnerable in that situation but it sounds like she was so strong.
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Your strength is amazing! No child - no person - should ever go through that. My grandmother and her older brother were orphaned in 1929 at 11 y/o & 13 y/o, respectively. Relatives took them in initially, then threw them out within 2 years when the settlement money from the accident was gone. Her brother lied about his age and joined the military and a lady in town took my grandmother in, thankfully. Their parents, younger sister & brother, uncle & young cousin were all killed when their car was hit by a train. My grandmother & another of her uncles were the only survivors. The brother wasn’t in the car.
 
Susikatze said:
I feel there is so much more to the story that we do not know
If Dawn never ran away or "rebelled", why was she kicked out? Maybe it was a similar story to Jenny Jukes. Dawns father remarried two years before Dawn was kicked out. Maybe she wanted to leave mom and live with him and the new wife but dad and the new wife had already moved on? Or Dawn wanted to hitchhike there and on the way fell prey to the Kinlaws and never made it to dad who may not even have known she was kicked out?


I feel we are missing lots of pieces here.

Jmoo
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Just having a horrible thought that maybe Dawn's father wondered why she ran away and never thought to get in touch with him, and maybe she was never included in his obituary because he thought she didn't want to know him? If so, it's terribly sad that he passed without knowing that she had too and that's the reason she wasn't around...

I know it will make no sense to some people how a 17 year old can be left to go out on her own and not have a parent seem concerned to her but in my experience, although I was the youngest of my siblings and the only girl, I was still treated as being more mature and able to look after myself than my brothers. Their behaviours were excused much more readily than mine, and I often faced the brunt of my parent's displeasure as though I could, or should, deal with it better than them even though ironically I was the most vulnerable. Reading about the young women found murdered on here, 14-17, being out on their own, does make me wonder if they were also seen as being mature by virtue of them being female. The whole "girls mature quicker than boys" and that we should be timid and not complain sort of thing, JMO of course and probably just the dynamic of my family as my mum was forced to become an adult young too, having to leave school to work. We don't know the dynamic of Dawn's family and I don't know if they plan to release more information about it but the press conference did say it had "opened old wounds"..
 
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It is very good to finally be getting some answers. This case was first posted on websleuths 2004, and there have been many follow on posts since - currently 49 pages of them!

Great work by the cold case investigators who have suceeded in bringing closure and in serving justice.
 
Just found out about the news. I've been waiting for this moment quite some time. it's also good to know that justice is imminent even though the likely perp is in jail anyway.
 
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