Identified! NJ - Blairstown, Cedar Ridge Cemetery, 'Princess Doe', WhtFem 14-18, 36UFNJ, peacock skirt, Jul'82 - Dawn Olanick *charges* #2

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I agree 100% on the hairstyle thing being confusing!! I can give you a good example from my younger years, actually...

I had a friend I met in 9th grade. Immediately before 10th grade started, she changed her hairstyle up completely. Guess who I had trouble finding on the first day of school? She went from straight, one-length, just about touching her shoulders to choppy, layered, right at her chin. The amount of texture she added threw myself and likely a few others off. It wasn't like if someone gets a foot cut off...that texturing can really change someone's overall appearance in the way it frames a face and whatnot--even if every other aspect of that person stays the same.

It's one of the first things someone sees, so in any recon, it's best to have a bunch of styles. I do like how they tried one recon here with a bun, especially since she was (I think) seen wearing one right before she was killed (I think she wore one at the grocery store).

(can add to the bun thing...I know a few women who ONLY wear their hair up...so seeing it down is a major "who is that?!?" from a lot of people)
 
MacPlus512 said:
I agree 100% on the hairstyle thing being confusing!! I can give you a good example from my younger years, actually...

I had a friend I met in 9th grade. Immediately before 10th grade started, she changed her hairstyle up completely. Guess who I had trouble finding on the first day of school? She went from straight, one-length, just about touching her shoulders to choppy, layered, right at her chin. The amount of texture she added threw myself and likely a few others off. It wasn't like if someone gets a foot cut off...that texturing can really change someone's overall appearance in the way it frames a face and whatnot--even if every other aspect of that person stays the same.

It's one of the first things someone sees, so in any recon, it's best to have a bunch of styles. I do like how they tried one recon here with a bun, especially since she was (I think) seen wearing one right before she was killed (I think she wore one at the grocery store).

(can add to the bun thing...I know a few women who ONLY wear their hair up...so seeing it down is a major "who is that?!?" from a lot of people)
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OT: I had a similar experience with my best friend in HS. She'd always worn her hair in a straight, shoulder length, same length cut with slightly feathered bangs. I showed up to school one day and some stranger was at her locker. I didn't even recognize her! She'd cut it off to a Dorothy Hamill like cut with straight across bangs. Not only that, but it also made her hair a darker blond because she cut off the lighter dead-ends.
Sadly, this was in the 80, and she's worn her hair in a similar style ever since. I don't think she's ever grown it out past her shoulders, worn it up in a bun or ponytail, ever.
 
carbuff said:
I have my doubts DNA will ever be that accurate--not that the facts won't be, but it still has to be translated to something that doesn't look like a character from a video game.

I like @MacPlus512's idea of showing the range of possibilities. If they had shown more than one possible hairstyle for Dawn, it might have helped someone recognize her--if the recons were ever shown in her area.

I suppose that's really one of the biggest issues, along with the quality of the representation--how to get a particular reconstruction in front of people who might recognize the person.
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I agree with the need to show a range of possibilities in a lot of different areas. Not only skin tone and hair color/style, but the little details, too.

One of the other threads I follow, Mr. Bones, goes into a lot of depth about contact lenses found with the individual's remains, and how they were able to learn where the lenses were manufactured, etc. I can't for the life of me figure out why there haven't been any reconstructions done with the individual wearing glasses, and when I mentioned it, it was just kind of shrugged off. I don't understand that -- I wear contacts, which means I also wear glasses, so why wouldn't they take one of the reconstructions and add a pair of glasses?

On the flip side, the artists doing these recreations from bits and pieces manage to produce some amazing work despite the challenges. We can only hope that time continues to bring about solutions to the issues we see happening.
 
Interesting discussion about hairstyles. When I saw the actual pictures of Dawn first posted I immediately noticed her hair. Oh. She had wavy/curly hair.

Also I do agree that Karl was close to what Dawn actually looked like. He was not far off.
 
I'm so happy to see she has her name! RIP Dawn, so many cared about you.

It freaks me out a bit as I am 2 years younger than her and grew up near West Babylon. At that time I dressed like Dawn in those wrap skirts, weighing 85 pounds, hitchhiking around Long Island, getting in strangers' cars for a ride to and from the beach. Basically being extremely vulnerable but thought I was invincible. Had moments where I had to jump out of cars at red lights. There but for the grace of God go I...
 
landis said:
Her surname sounds Polish. It could've been something along the lines of Olanicki at first, but because this kind of a surname ends in -ki for men and -ka for women, it might've been shortened to just Olanick to avoid the confusion or something.
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My maternal family are olynik, olanick olinick all different spellings they came from Ukraine , the spellings vary my moms family settled in Saskatchewan Canada early 1900 when census ect came around the people spelt it how it sounds . I’m just catching up on this so glad they found her name
 
I know we can't directly link to Unidentified Wiki, but there are a few images there. I think her hair is likely permed in the 1981 pic. (Curly perms went in and out of style late 70's -1990)

Her hair appears be to naturally wavy enough to hold a feathered bang style, but it is not curly in older pictures. (not quite as wavy as Kim Kardashian's...yes Kim's is naturally fairly wavy..probably not the best comparison..LOL) This waviness may not have shown up in a post mortem image, especially if the bangs were grown out.

I do wonder about her dentals though...She seems to have something distinct going on...I wonder if she had worn braces and the issue was resolved?
 
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Just saw this news video and hadn't seen it posted here yet. I have stated previously that I have a customer just a mile or so down the road from her grave, so I see it several times a year.

I haven't been to see them in the last two weeks, but I will be curious to see if that weird, dark feeling I always get when I go there is resolved now that we have her name, hoping her spirit is now resting easy.

www.wfmz.com

Loved ones, original detectives, Blairstown community left speechless after 'Princess Doe,' her suspected killer both identified 40 years after she was found

Click here to view this video from wfmz.com.
www.wfmz.com www.wfmz.com
 
I'm glad she was identified. I did look up her father's obit. When people don't know what happened to a possibly missing or estranged family member who hasn't been heard from for decades, sometimes they are listed as living still in family obits, and sometimes they aren't mentioned at all as in Dawn's case and in some cases they are listed as deceased. When you don't know, the easiest thing is just not to mention them, so I wouldn't take it in a bad way that she was not mentioned in his obit. He seems to have been closest, perhaps, to his youngest daughter, as they aren't a lot of photos of his son on his online obit either while they are a lot of photos of Dawn's younger sister with him
..or maybe they just had a better camera by the time she graduated high school and stuff. Perhaps the absence of Dawn being mentioned in his obit points to the fact she and her disapearence may have been a painful topic that the family on her father's side approached with silence for years so that they weren't suddenly going to mention her name or post photos of her on his online obit. That could be. We don't know how he reacted to news she had disappeared after being asked to leave her mother's home or indeed how her mother reacted. It is sad she wasn't identified long ago. Her case certainly got a lot of attention online over the years..
 
There were so many reconstructions over the years, and with so little to work with, it's no surprise they're all different. What did surprise me when her actual picture was released was how close the artist that did the blonde reconstruction got. Oh, I know the hair's wrong, the chin is rounder, and so on, but the eyes, the cheeks, the smile... They're so close. Other photos I've seen where she's not smiling, she looks completely different, but that reconstruction, compared with that photo where she's smiling, it's uncanny. Especially when they were working with such damage, such loss of structure (like Bender's Girl with Hope/Rosella Atkinson). Wonderful.

Sleep well, Dawn.
 
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caradana said:
Reconstructions will go the way of the horse & buggy: very helpful in their time, the best technology of what was around. DNA propensity will pass it (“there is a 74% chance that this victim had an overbite … there is a 98% chance this victim had blue eyes” … etc). I say this as someone who thinks the best horse & buggy was probably the one built right at the same time that Henry Ford fired up an engine, and who respects immensely the historical cases where reconstruction was game changing. JOHN LIST. The man who created that clay bust solved that case right on down to the glasses. It’s just that DNA is so powerful and so definitive - and this isn’t really a surprise to us - I remember a forensic science class i took in 1997 where we discussed Patricia Cornwall and hair follicles. The day has now come. Glory be.
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Oh yes, Frank Bender created the List masterpiece. I got the impression that Bender put his heart and soul into each sculpture. That was such win for him, John Walsh, and AMW.

It's sad that the recreations missed the mark for Dawn, other than one or two that would get a "Ehh, maybe?"

Did her family see any of these, and wonder?

I think if I had a missing loved one, I'd probably take action even if it was just the eyebrows that were similar.

(Not judging the family. I don't know their stories or situations.)

Edit:
Shamrock1 said:
That was the self-taught Frank Bender. Mesothelioma, unfortunately. The Girl with the Crooked Nose is worth a read. The bust “The Girl with Hope” is uncanny.

“A conjurer in clay, Mr. Bender was, he often said, as much psychologist as sculptor, divining — or so it seemed — features that skulls alone could not tell him: hair color, characteristic expressions or precise skin color, which he painted onto the finished sculpture.”
Frank Bender, ‘Recomposer’ of Faces of the Dead, Dies at 70 (Published 2011)
Frank Bender, ‘Recomposer’ of Faces of the Dead, Dies at 70 (Published 2011)
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Just saw your post after I posted. Thanks for this! I watched AMW for years and I remember Bender was in studio with Walsh when he announced his diagnosis. And AMW honored him when he passed.
 
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Picture of

Dawn Rita Olanick, age 17​

BIRTH 5 Aug 1964 Bohemia, Suffolk County, New York, USA
DEATH July 1982 (aged 17) Blairstown, Warren County, New Jersey, USA
BURIAL Cedar Ridge Cemetery, Blairstown, Warren County, New Jersey, USA

"Princess Doe" was unidentified until July 15, 2022.

She was 17 when she was killed; a high school junior from Long Island.

A convicted killer, Arthur Kinlaw, had confessed to the crime from prison in 2005, the Warren County prosecutor's office said. But it was not until this week, after DNA evidence was used to confirm Ms. Olanick's identity, that Mr. Kinlaw was charged with her murder.

Her partially clad body was found on July 15, 1982 in Cedar Ridge Cemetery, which became her final resting place as well. In life, the young woman was 5'2" in height, and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds, with shoulder-length light brown hair.

Forensic evidence revealed that she had been severely beaten before her death, and that a heavy blow to the head killed her. She may have been dead up to a week before she was discovered on July 15, 1982.

For nearly forty years, neither her identity, not that of her killer, were known. Dubbed "Princess Doe," on June 30, 1983 she became the first person entered into the FBI's national computerized unidentified deceased files.

Inscription:
PRINCESS DOE
MISSING FROM HOME
DEAD AMONG STRANGERS
REMEMBERED BY ALL
BORN - ? FOUND JULY 15, 1982

LINK:
www.findagrave.com

Dawn Rita “Princess Doe” Olanick (1964-1982) -...

Unidentified until July 15, 2022. She was 17 when she was killed; a high school junior from Long Island. A convicted killer, Arthur Kinlaw, had confessed to the crime from prison in 2005, the Warren County prosecutor's office said. But it was not until this week, after DNA evidence was used to...
www.findagrave.com www.findagrave.com
 
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