Hold the phone, kids, I may have something here.....
I started playing around with my search parameters tonight. I too thought the black lung would be the key to solving this case. However, I backed off that for a minute and focused on the unique gray eyes. I widened my search parameters in terms of age and time missing, because it sounded like this person may have been living a somewhat transient lifestyle and could have been separated from their family for a long time.
It was a pretty short list, and when I hit Faye Aline Self, the more I looked at it, the more promising it became.
https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/1370/0/
At first glance, she isn't exactly a surefire match for our UID. But Self went missing in 1983 at the age of 26. So I'd expect she'd look older/more haggard 16 years later.
But: Her natural hair color is right, and she was known to dye it.
Her height (5'0 to 5'2) is not at all out of range for 5'3.
Her eyes are grey
She is not wearing earrings in any of the photos I can see.
She had at least one child.
Per Doe Network, she had a hysterectomy.
Per the Doe Network, she wore upper dentures.
Fay is from Louisiana (UID was found in MS, very near Louisiana).
Cons: Faye had a scar on her leg and a vaccination scar on her arm, but perhaps those were less noticeable with time.
There is a thread for her here where you can read more about her disappearance:
LA LA - Faye Aline Self, 26, Armistead, 30 March 1983 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community
Basically, she was at a bar with friends, told them she had to leave and get home to her baby, but was seen last in the parking lot with another woman and two men. She was never seen again.
In the thread her family is quoted as saying she had a wild streak but they did not think she would leave her baby as she had been more responsible since the baby came.
Ironically, a convicted killer confessed to killing Faye as well, but some on the thread are cynical because his confession doesn't tie in with the known circumstances.
Now, what about the black lung? According to Wikipedia, there are only a few states with underground mines, the kind where you might be likely to develop black lung....Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. That's from memory, but I'm pretty sure that's all of them. So this would mean that Faye would not only have had to leave, but would have had to end up in one of those states if this is indeed her.
Looking at her NamUs file, her daughter, I think, has posted several pictures of Faye. Two of the five or six pics posted are Faye in Colorado. I think the tag on one is "Colorado, of course." So I guess my money would be on Colorado.
So, I wonder if Faye made an excuse to her friends that night and ran off to Colorado with some people she knew from there. I don't think the people she was last seen with were ever identified, and that would make sense why. Maybe she didn't plan on being gone forever, and maybe she did. Perhaps, knowing she was ill, she was on her way home to set things right when this happened.
Thoughts?
