Identified! WA - Burien, WhtFem ,97UFWA, 12-18, Green River victim, Mar'84 - Wendy Stephens

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Denver girl identified as victim of Green River Killer | 9news.com

"DDP said one of Wendy Stephens' parents took a direct-to-consumer DNA test in early 2019 and uploaded the results to GEDmatch, hoping to learn Wendy's fate. Unbeknownst to Stephens' parent, GEDmatch had changed its policy regarding law enforcement access to matches, according to a release from DDP."

Her family was looking for her and got confused with the opt-in option on gedmatch. I'm so glad they finally know where their little girl is. How heartbreaking.
 
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I must say, NCMEC's reconstruction was very accurate. Glad to see GEDMatch's Terms Of Service change is doing good already. RIP, Wendy.
 
Colorado girl who ran away in 1983 linked through DNA to unidentified remains from Green River case

Jan 25, 2021

Stephens, who was 14 when she ran away from her parents’ Denver, Colorado, home in 1983, is now believed to be Ridgway’s youngest victim, a King County Sheriff’s spokesperson said Monday. Her bones were recovered in March 1984.

Last year, county investigators submitted bone fragments to the DNA Doe Project’s contracted lab to create a genetic sequence that the group then uploaded to the genealogy sites, GEDMatch and FamilyTreeDNA, in search of potential relatives. There were no direct matches, but the profile returned multiple distant cousins on both sides of the Jane Doe’s family tree, said Cairenn Binder, who led the team of genealogists who worked on the case.

The team then built out family trees in search of common ancestors that led to the “smoking gun couple” — Stephens’ parents, Binder said. The group notified the King County Sheriff’s Office of the match on Sept. 27. Investigators, in turn, notified Stephens’ mother and traveled to Colorado to collect a DNA reference sample from her that recently confirmed the identification. The Sheriff’s Office announced Stephens’ identification Monday.

As it turned out, Stephens’ mother had uploaded her own DNA to GEDMatch in February 2019, hoping to learn the fate of her missing daughter, Binder said. But shortly after her submission, GEDMatch implemented a new “opt in” policy that only allows law enforcement access to the DNA kits contained in the site’s database if users explicitly agree to it.

“By no fault of her own, the parent of this Jane Doe was unware of the policy change,” Binder said. “Otherwise, we could have solved it immediately.”

Instead, it took months of sleuthing by the California-based genealogist group to eventually narrow down the closest-common ancestors identifying Stephens.
 
Kings County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit first discussed the Stephens’ case with DDP in August 2019. Bone samples were sent to to a lab in April 2020 for DNA extraction; in June the DNA obtained was shipped for sequencing at another lab. The results were uploaded to GEDmatch on Sept 4, 2020 and research commenced, according to Monday’s announcement.
Teen missing in 1983 identified as victim of Green River Killer | PAhomepage.com

List of suspected perpetrators of crimes identified with GEDmatch - Wikipedia
 
“Ridgway’s murderous spree left a trail of profound grief for so many families of murdered and missing women,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in a written statement. “We are thankful that Wendy Stephens’ family will now have answers to their enormous loss suffered nearly 40 years ago.”

Researchers at the DNA Doe Project, a volunteer organization that uses publicly available DNA databases to find relatives of unidentified victims, helped make the identification.

Genetic genealogy has increasingly been used to track down unidentified criminal suspects and help solve scores of cold cases in recent years, some of them more than a half-century old or involving other serial killers. It unmasked the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, who pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 13 rape-related charges that spanned much of California between 1975 and 1986.

Stephens' remains were found in a wooded area next to a baseball field in what is now the suburb of SeaTac on March 21, 1984, after the groundskeeper's dog came home with a leg bone. She had been killed a year or more earlier, investigators believe, and she is thought to have been Ridgway's youngest victim.
Genetic genealogy helps ID victim of Green River Killer
 
Seattle1 said:
Colorado girl who ran away in 1983 linked through DNA to unidentified remains from Green River case

Jan 25, 2021

Stephens, who was 14 when she ran away from her parents’ Denver, Colorado, home in 1983, is now believed to be Ridgway’s youngest victim, a King County Sheriff’s spokesperson said Monday. Her bones were recovered in March 1984.

Last year, county investigators submitted bone fragments to the DNA Doe Project’s contracted lab to create a genetic sequence that the group then uploaded to the genealogy sites, GEDMatch and FamilyTreeDNA, in search of potential relatives. There were no direct matches, but the profile returned multiple distant cousins on both sides of the Jane Doe’s family tree, said Cairenn Binder, who led the team of genealogists who worked on the case.

The team then built out family trees in search of common ancestors that led to the “smoking gun couple” — Stephens’ parents, Binder said. The group notified the King County Sheriff’s Office of the match on Sept. 27. Investigators, in turn, notified Stephens’ mother and traveled to Colorado to collect a DNA reference sample from her that recently confirmed the identification. The Sheriff’s Office announced Stephens’ identification Monday.

As it turned out, Stephens’ mother had uploaded her own DNA to GEDMatch in February 2019, hoping to learn the fate of her missing daughter, Binder said. But shortly after her submission, GEDMatch implemented a new “opt in” policy that only allows law enforcement access to the DNA kits contained in the site’s database if users explicitly agree to it.

“By no fault of her own, the parent of this Jane Doe was unware of the policy change,” Binder said. “Otherwise, we could have solved it immediately.”

Instead, it took months of sleuthing by the California-based genealogist group to eventually narrow down the closest-common ancestors identifying Stephens.
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This child had beautiful eyes. I'm sorry she knew so much trouble in her young life, and then lost it to a monster. Rest in peace, sweet Wendy.
 
Genetic genealogy helps identify Green River Killer's youngest victim | Daily Mail Online

Jan 26, 2021

Genetic genealogy helped identify the youngest known victim of one of the nation's most prolific serial murderers known as the Green River Killer almost 37 years after the 14-year-old girl's skeletal remains were discovered near a baseball field south of Seattle.

Wendy Stephens, who until now had been known only as 'Bones 10,' had run away from her home in Denver before Gary Ridgway strangled her in 1983, the King County Sheriff's Office announced on Monday.

Ridgway terrorized the Seattle area in the 1980s, and since 2003, he has pleaded guilty to killing 49 women and girls. Four of the victims - including Stephens - remained unidentified at the time of his plea.

[..]

Stephens' remains were found in a fetal position in a wooded area next to a baseball field in what is now the suburb of SeaTac on March 21, 1984, after the groundskeeper's dog came home with a leg bone.

[..]

She had been killed a year or more earlier, investigators believe, and she is thought to have been Ridgway's youngest victim.

[..]

Stephens' family requested privacy and declined to speak with reporters, said Sgt. Tim Meyer, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.

Cairenn Binder, who led the DNA Doe Project team that identified Stephens, said that by entering her DNA information into a genealogy website, they were able to locate distant cousins on both her mother's side and father's side. By building out a family tree with census, birth and other records, they pinpointed where the families intersected - Stephens' parents.

Investigators found a missing person report for Stephens that had been filed in 1983, and they matched her DNA directly with one of her parents.
 
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SolVic said:
Any updates on the exact date when she was last seen? It had to have been sometime in spring 1983.
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There's no confirmed date -- only the year 1983.

Reportedly, a missing person report was filed in 1983 but the exact date unknown (her parents requested privacy from media). At the time the remains recovered March 1984, it was believed they were about a year old. She was believed to have been killed spring/summer 1983.
 
Seattle1 said:
As it turned out, Stephens’ mother had uploaded her own DNA to GEDMatch in February 2019, hoping to learn the fate of her missing daughter, Binder said. But shortly after her submission, GEDMatch implemented a new “opt in” policy that only allows law enforcement access to the DNA kits contained in the site’s database if users explicitly agree to it.

“By no fault of her own, the parent of this Jane Doe was unware of the policy change,” Binder said. “Otherwise, we could have solved it immediately.”
Click to expand...

It sounds like her mom was trying to find her. She was probably hoping she was still alive, living somewhere else.

Her family filed a missing persons report for her in 1983, so they were trying to find her. It was just much harder in those days. LE assumed they were runaways and would eventually come home. Not much investigation involved.

She certainly moved far away in a short period of time. I wonder why she wanted to go to Seattle? Maybe just wanted an adventure or had a friend who had moved there.

RIP and condolences to her family. I hope they find some peace now, though the news is probably very difficult for them.
 
There's a long and very sad article in The New York Times where they interview Wendy's mother. Wendy's father died in 2014 and she was an only child. Also, Doctor Kathy Taylor who worked on this case died in August 2021.
 
JovanSrna said:
There's a long and very sad article in The New York Times where they interview Wendy's mother. Wendy's father died in 2014 and she was an only child. Also, Doctor Kathy Taylor who worked on this case died in August 2021.
Click to expand...
Here’s the link in case you have a subscription to NYTimes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

If not, below are some heartbreaking snippets. Wendy was and is deeply loved and missed:

Before her disappearance, Wendy was, in her mother’s words, a “magical kid.”

As she moved into her early teens, her mother was struck — and at times, frightened — by her beauty and free spirit. Ms. Gaspar described Wendy’s “deep-set blue eyes” and the first glimpses of a girl growing into a magnetic young woman. “People weren’t strangers to her. Everybody was a potential friend,” she said. “I was always afraid for her because she was that way.”

In Colorado, life had taken a turn in the Stephens household. Wendy began hanging with a different crowd, spending more time alone in the basement, and skipping school.

“She would just take off,” she said, describing disappearances that might last days or even weeks. “And there would be no forethought. She would leave in the winter without a coat.”

As the winter of 1982-83 wore on, Ms. Gaspar did her best to keep track of her daughter. She’d drive around looking for Wendy, once even tracking her footsteps through the snow.

Ms. Gaspar sought professional help for her daughter, hoping counseling could elicit answers: Where did she go? With whom? And, most inexplicably, why?

In Denver, Ms. Gaspar looked frantically for Wendy, scouring the neighborhood by car and gathering intelligence from her daughter’s friends. One friend reported that Wendy was in Washington, but was unsure if it was Washington State or Washington, D.C.

“I had contacted the police,” she said. “They took a report, filed it. I badgered them a few times. I thought of putting her on a milk carton.” She kept her home phone number listed, just in case Wendy ever came looking.
The wondering became an obsession.

“People would ask me, ‘Do you have children?’” she said. “For how many years, decades, I would not know how to answer that simple, innocent question.”
One night, five or so years after Wendy’s disappearance, Ms. Gaspar sat up in bed with a deep conviction. “There’s a certain tie that mothers and daughters have,” she said. “It’s not anything that we’re privy to in our small but tangible realm. My tie said that she was no longer walking on this plane.”

In early September, the Doe Project uploaded the DNA kit to the public genetics databases GEDMatch and later FamilyTreeDNA. Led by a volunteer, Cairenn Binder, a team of five forensic genealogists began building out a family tree. Immediately they noticed the presence of an unknown but closely related family member. “Once in a great while, we get a hint that there’s somebody there,” Dr. Press said. “She’s invisible to us, but we can see her impact on the genetic networks that we’re working on.”
As they later learned, the invisible match was Ms. Gaspar, who had uploaded her results to GEDMatch in early 2019, on the slim chance it could lead her to Wendy. Were it not for a change in the database’s “opt-out” policy that made Ms. Gaspar’s profile visible to everyone except for law enforcement investigators, they would have identified her immediately.

Ms. Gaspar described a certain amount of comfort that came with “not wondering if she’s going to call me or knock on my door, or how many grandkids do I have?” But, she added, “When you go to bed each night, and you think about the last of her moments, that’s not peace.”
 
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