Lasalle County Jane Doe - identified as Paula Ann Lundgren.
"LaSALLE COUNTY (
25News Now) - A body found on this day 33 years ago in a cornfield in LaSalle County has now been identified.
LaSalle County Coroner Richard Ploch identified the woman as Paula Ann Lundgren.
Lundgren was born in 1962, primarily lived in the Chicagoland area and was 29 at the time of her death discovery.
LaSalle County Sheriff Adam Diss is hopeful that with her identification, new leads can be developed to figure out how she came to be in the cornfield and who was responsible for placing her there.
According to a joint release from the coroner and sheriff, her case spanned the timeline of three sheriffs and four coroners.
On Sep. 13, 1991, a farmer found Lundgren’s body in a cornfield in Mission Township, near Norway, Illinois. She was found underneath a curtain with hooks and was clothed in a men’s style dress shirt with stripes and black spandex pants. There were no shoes or personal effects.
Her medical cause of death was determined to be probable cocaine intoxication, but her manner of death was undetermined.
Interred at Oakwood Memorial Park, her headstone reads, 'Somebody’s Daugther, Somebody’s Friend.'
She was exhumed from her grave in 2013 in order to obtain DNA and reexamine the case findings. New investigative techniques were used in hopes of identifying her.
Facial reconstruction modeling, age regression, radiocarbon dating and isotopic diet studies were conducted on her skeletal remains - techniques helpful in providing new information but leaving investigators still unable to identify her.
In 2019, a professor at Illinois Valley Community College offered to help work the case, using the new technique of investigative genetic genealogy.
Many new leads were developed and in July 2024, a possible living relative was identified and confirmed."
According to a joint release from the coroner and sheriff, her case spanned the timeline of three sheriffs and four coroners.
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