It seems to me that the jacket is key here. I see some people have done a bit of sleuthing into who Coach Williams could be, and I've done some myself. Here are my thoughts.
Let me preface this by saying that the likelihood of identifying the jacket's owner is slim, and even knowing who the jacket was made for could mean
absolutely nothing in regards to determining Jane Doe's identity. I imagine that there are
a lot of "Coach Williams" in all the clubs/colleges/high schools/private schools/summer camps, etc in CA and the surrounding states. Even narrowing it down to water polo or volleyball, I would venture to guess there are literally ten thousand people who this could reasonably have belonged to from California alone. "Williams" is the
third most common last name in the USA. Now consider this - there are
602 high school boys water polo teams and
just under 600 female teams in California. That is only at the high school level, only water polo, only in one state. Teams could have multiple coaches, and coaches could change every year. There are
nearly 3000 volley ball teams. Again,
we are only talking about the high school level.
Beyond that, it is definitely possible that the jacket was given to a thrift store or lost at a party and then obtained by someone who is completely unrelated to "Coach Williams. Maybe the jacket belonged to a Coach Williams and his wife lent it to a friend who lost it on a train. Maybe Coach Williams is a woman who coached a tiny volleyball summer camp for a few weeks in a small town in Oklahoma and gave the jacket to her daughter when she went away to college.
Plus we have have no indication of a definite timeframe whatsoever. We can use our best judgment based on her clothing and our cultural knowledge, but we are essentially looking for a particular person who coached a sports team at any level in any state from any time in the last 50 or so years.
Despite all of that, having an article of clothing with an identifiable name and image found on an otherwise very difficult to recognize body is far more detail than many UID cases have. Even if the jacket was lost or given away to someone else entirely, it would be helpful to identify the original owner in order to establish some kind of timeline or geographic distinction. If it was made decades ago, though, I doubt the owner would even remember it. Im sure even the smallest sports shops make hundred of these every year.
I have been doing a lot of research this week into possibilities, I'll make a follow up post in a bit. Just wanted to get this out there whie it was back at the top!
