CA CA - Westlake Village, HispFem 18-30, UP11249, pregnant, in parking lot, Jul'80

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It is admittedly quite strange. Do they keep the names anonymous, and this one just happened to be leaked? I don't want to look up fictional characters online with the intent of looking for fictional characters and instead finding images of postmortem autopsies.

I really don't know the answer to that, sorry.
 
It is admittedly quite strange. Do they keep the names anonymous, and this one just happened to be leaked? I don't want to look up fictional characters online with the intent of looking for fictional characters and instead finding images of postmortem autopsies.
Yes, they are apparently normally kept anonymous and used within DNA Doe to more easily describe certain cases rather than having to say "1983 Lewis County WA skeletal Jane Doe" (not a real case, just an example). It was leaked by Det. Rhods to the press since I guess he was in the know.

Googling "Lyra Jade" turns up nothing about this case, at least on the first two pages of Google results. It's mostly results about various women named Lyra Jade. I have no idea what video game the name is from but it's not pulled up with a Google search.
 
Yes, they are apparently normally kept anonymous and used within DNA Doe to more easily describe certain cases rather than having to say "1983 Lewis County WA skeletal Jane Doe" (not a real case, just an example). It was leaked by Det. Rhods to the press since I guess he was in the know.

Googling "Lyra Jade" turns up nothing about this case, at least on the first two pages of Google results. It's mostly results about various women named Lyra Jade. I have no idea what video game the name is from but it's not pulled up with a Google search.

I had found the game character a while back, but now I don't remember what it was. Might be earlier in this thread...
 
This one I think. ;)
That Lyra Jade is someone's personal avatar in an online game, not a "character" in the way you might be thinking of. Carl Koppelman had this to say:
DDP has nicknames for all their Does (often just names of fictional characters), which are used in our private discussions. Someone came up with Lyra Jade, though I don't remember who came up that name or why. Ordinarily, those nicknames are never revealed to the public, but in this instance Steve Rhods referred to her by the internal nickname when talking to the author of the story.
 
I went back to our communications back to 2018, from the person who came up with the name Lyra Jade. It had nothing to do with video games.

It was more a confluence of random thoughts starting from the lyrics to a Tom Petty song that referenced "Ventura Boulevard", and "I want to write her name in the sky". That lead to Googling the names of other Tom Petty songs, namely "American Girl", which returned an advertisement for a child's doll named "American Girl doll of the year 2018, Luciana Vega".

Noting the celestial significance of both "Vega", and the "name in the sky" from the T Petty song, she Googled "Vega", which led her to the constellation "Lyra" in which Vega is it's brightest star. Lyra being too simple, she needed a middle name. She googled "Lyra", which returned a reference to a person named "Lyra Jade", and still thinking of Tom Petty songs, namely "Last dance with Mary Jane", and with Jade being a mineral common to Latin America, she settled on "Lyra Jade".

It just goes to show that it's not always a deliberate process when one is tasked with coming up with a nickname.
 
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I went back to our communications back to 2018, from the person who came up with the name Lyra Jade. It had nothing to do with video games.

It was more a confluence of random thoughts starting from the lyrics to a Tom Petty song that referenced "Ventura Boulevard", and "I want to write her name in the sky". That lead to Googling the names of other Tom Petty songs, namely "American Girl", which returned an advertisement for a child's doll named "American Girl doll of the year 2018, Luciana Vega".

Noting the celestial significance of both "Vega", and the "name in the sky" from the T Petty song, she Googled "Vega", which led her to the constellation "Lyra" in which Vega is it's brightest star. Lyra being too simple, she needed a middle name. She googled "Lyra", which returned a reference to a person named "Lyra Jade", and still thinking of Tom Petty songs, namely "Last dance with Mary Jane", and with Jade being a mineral common to Latin America, she settled on "Lyra Jade".

It just goes to show that it's not always a deliberate process when one is tasked with coming up with a nickname.
Thank you for sharing. That’s beautiful. Every time I hear those lyrics in “Free Fallin” I will think of her.
 
This was wonderful to learn about! I am not sure why I thought it was a video game-related name, but looks like it is also the name of a video game character as Mad McGoo found out (though unrelated).

I think it is a really pretty name, especially with the backstory! I also feel it suits her very well until we find out her true name.
 
Just checking in - still haven't forgotten her! I still wish, so fervently, that there was something I could do to help her, to help her family - but at this point, IMO, it's in DNA Doe Project's hands, and what good hands they are. :) It would be appreciated, at least by me, if we could all send prayers, good vibes, or whatever else to DNA Doe Project so that they are able to find her identity and bring her home to her family! We are all so blessed to have them working so hard on her and many other cases.
 
Looking at this photo, and the two other does, it's really remarkable how good of a job Carl K does, with VCJD in this case. VCJD looks rather humanized, if a bit uncanny due to limits with the only photos known to the public. There should be more like Carl K's portraits out there.

Broadway St Phoenix JD looks more like a police sketch for a suspect in a crime than a forensic reconstruction, while the sculpture of Kilgore Jane Doe, just prior to me typing this, actually gave me a brief scare like I unsuspectingly clicked on an internet screamer video.
 
Yes. I think you described them perfectly. I agree with you on Carl K’s recons. Such a great eye for detail. Sure wish I would have been born with this type of talent.

I sure wish they would have had a second recon for Kilgore JD.
 
When I took a forensics class a few years back, the person teaching the reconstructions class said (among other things) that many older sketches and reconstructions are aimed at LE, not the general public, and LE is generally not going to be seeing you at your best. So they don't care if the sketch is flattering as long as it's accurate.

More recent techniques go more for a "you could use this as your profile pic" look.

CarlK manages to do both, which I think is totally amazing.
 
When I took a forensics class a few years back, the person teaching the reconstructions class said (among other things) that many older sketches and reconstructions are aimed at LE, not the general public, and LE is generally not going to be seeing you at your best. So they don't care if the sketch is flattering as long as it's accurate.

More recent techniques go more for a "you could use this as your profile pic" look.

CarlK manages to do both, which I think is totally amazing.
That's interesting! I never knew that. Thanks for sharing.
 
That's interesting! I never knew that. Thanks for sharing.

Well, it's one instructor's opinion, so I'd keep the salt handy, but it did seem to explain some of the differences in approach.

Another thing I've noticed--and this is just my own observation--is that in the sixties we were still used to lots of black and white TV and photos, so we could sort of extrapolate color from a pencil sketch. With color TV and monitors and phones and everything, I find myself less and less able to picture what a person in a black and white sketch might have looked like.
 

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