Hi
I have a very strong and special interest in this Unidentified Jane Doe.I know there was a discussion awhile back.If this could be Becky Minish.Did anyone find out more about this?I don't think there was dental on becky.I am not sure though.In this article it says she could be a street person?This bothers me.She appeared too well groomed to me to be a street person.Do they know where the rug she was wrapped in or the pool cover could have came from?Does anyone know or can find out the name of the Auto body shop it use to be?What else was near there or any more on this Jane Doe found?
Plain Dealer,
The Cleveland, OH
June 30, 1997
Edition: FINAL / LAKE
Section: METRO
Page: 5B
IDENTITY OF WOMAN FOUND DEAD A LONGTIME MYSTERY IN TOLEDO
Author: ROBIN ERB THE BLADE
Dateline: TOLEDO
Do I remind you of someone?
The reconstruction of her smiling face has prompted that same question for years, but no one has been able to offer answers to Jane Doe, officially known as Lucas County coroner's case No. A270-87.
She is the county's only unidentified female death case and has become one of the area's longest-running mysteries. Today, exactly 10 years since her burning body was found in an alley near Detroit Ave. and Collingwood Blvd., investigators have more questions than answers.
The woman, estimated to be 16 to 21 years old, was wrapped in a tan tweed carpet and a pool cover, thrown into a bunch of weeds behind an abandoned auto body shop, and doused with gasoline. A passing motorist found her body, which was charred and decomposed beyond recognition.
She probably died of a cocaine overdose several days earlier, the coroner's office said. The body showed no signs of trauma or injury besides those caused by the fire.
Authorities believe those who were with her panicked and dumped her body, but investigators haven't ruled out homicide.
"We just didn't have any answers to those questions," Coroner James Patrick said.
Jane Doe was Caucasian, possibly having some American Indian in her ancestry. She was 5 feet 4 to 5 feet 8, of slender build, with blond or light brown hair. She had several pearl earrings in each ear, bright pink polish on her toenails and finger nails, and wore Jordache jeans.
Her dental work was unusual in that her front teeth were straight, but her lower first molars and upper right molar had been extracted when she was young.
Most likely, forensic anthropologist Julie Saul said, Jane Doe had a beautiful smile.
In the basement of the county coroner's office, Jane Doe's skull sits on a laboratory shelf where Julie Saul and her husband, Frank, see her every day.
The couple, forensic anthropologists who work for the coroner's office, might be the only possible link to Jane Doe's identity.
The Sauls have taken their search for her name far beyond their Arlington Ave. lab. When they travel on lectures, they carry a picture of Jane Doe with them and study the faces on all the missing-persons posters they can find.
They watch shows like "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries" for clues.
Inquiries have come from as far away as New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.
But time and time again, dental records and other identifiers have become dead ends, leading the Sauls back to the same questions.
Where was she from? Why did she die? Why would someone set her on fire and dump her body?
In 1991, frustrated by dead-end computer searches, the Sauls turned Jane Doe's skull over to Amy Sanderson, a forensic scientist at the Michigan State Police crime lab in East Lansing, Mich.
Anderson used clay, complicated anthropological formulas, and a bit of artistic guesswork to reconstruct Jane Doe's face.
Investigators put posters of the reconstructed face in police stations across the region.
A cartoon-like speech bubble connected to her face asks: "Do I remind you of someone?"
Today, thistles, tall grass, and flowers grow behind a former auto-body shop where a North Toledo man found the smoking body on June 16, 1987.
Detective Tom Ross, the lead investigator on the case, returned to the site recently - on a muggy, partly overcast morning much like the one 10 years ago when the body was found.
Investigators had searched the area extensively, including the weeds and roof of the body shop. They interviewed neighbors. They tried to match their Jane Doe with women missing from other states.
In the end, they came up with nothing. Her file was long ago shelved in the dusty basement of the Safety Building downtown.
The case gnaws at Ross, who has spent more than two decades solving Toledo homicides, meticulously recording each one in a three-ring binder.
He theorizes that the woman might have been institutionalized for years in an orphanage or a similar facility. Perhaps she was released, turned to drugs, and was forever lost to the streets. Under those circumstances, he said, she probably would have no relatives and no one to miss her.
"I still think of her every once in a while," he said. "I still wonder. I don't know if we'll ever find answers. There's always a chance."
The Sauls have not given up hope either. Anthropologists, Frank Saul said, must steel themselves against becoming personally involved with their subjects.
But as Julie Saul handles Jane Doe's skull, her fingers tracing the eye sockets and teeth, it is with more than clinical curiosity.
"The last thing we can do for anybody is to identify them and understand why they died," she said, shaking her head.
How sad it must be to die without loved ones, she ponders aloud. How sad it is not to know where loved ones have gone.
The Sauls would not say where Jane Doe's remains were buried. Frank Saul said he prefers to think of her grave not as Jane Doe's final destination, but as a temporary resting place until she can be buried with family.
"We want to offer something to her next of kin, give them some resolution," Frank Saul said.
"It's a matter of respect. You have to keep trying - you must."
http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com/topic/816
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/335ufoh.html