Identified! OH - Troy, Miami Co., 'Buckskin Girl' WhtFem 133UFOH, 15-25, Apr'81 - Marcia King

[MelmothTheLost]

No, her DNA will be compared with regular people of the general population who decided to upload their DNA test results to GEDMatch.

This really is excellent news. I firmly believe that if this can be done for a lot of these old cases it will be a massive step forward. I see quite a few posters on this thread think BG is a victim of a personal or domestic attack rather than one by a random stranger. If so, then simply identifying her will probably go a long way to finding her killer.

 

[Alleykins]

Is there any info on if this was a two way road? I'm wondering which side she was found on - this could be a clue to where she was coming from.

I think investigators have an idea about this. I was told when I called that there is a steep hill nearby that semis can't get over and this road is the last turn off before the hill? I'm not familiar with the terrain myself, but if anyone from the area knows the hill being referred to, that would give us an idea.

 

[AggieLou]

This video shows the road she was found on in the interview footage with the man who found her & the detectives. It appears to be a two way street, based on the yellow line.

Did you link to a video?

 

[Alleykins]

Did you link to a video?

Yes, the link is the highlighted word video in my post.

 

[annie970]

Hey did anyone read the report when it comes on the screen in that video? Something about someone remember seeing the girl at a laundromat with another girl and a man with two stubs for arms?

 

[Alleykins]

I went back and re-watched the video, and though I couldn't see the whole page of the report, I saw the description you were talking about. Not sure what to make of them. They appear to be tips they followed but possibly went nowhere. Looks like there may have been a lot of them?
It would be interesting if we could somehow get a map of all the places of folks who reported seeing her before she passed.

 

[annie970]

Yes there was also mention of a woman who saw her sitting on something (a porch? I think?)... They mentioned her pigtails which are distinct.

Don't want to give it too much credence because it could've been a mistaken identity but since we have so little to work on with her it might be worth theorizing. Could imply more connections to Ohio than we thought

 

[Alleykins]

Yes there was also mention of a woman who saw her sitting on something (a porch? I think?)... They mentioned her pigtails which are distinct.

Don't want to give it too much credence because it could've been a mistaken identity but since we have so little to work on with her it might be worth theorizing. Could imply more connections to Ohio than we thought

She still could have been passing through. I've visited OH three times, twice to Cleveland and once to a small town on the WV border.
I think I stayed a week each time and frequented restaurants and drinking establishments. None of the people I visited live in OH anymore, btw, so what few ties I had there are long gone.

 

[annie970]

I've only been there a few times too and mostly in passing. Im sure this has been mentioned before, but I have read Ohio a major location for human trafficking since it connect the midwest and east coast, has a lot of truck routes, and close connections to Canada. I know this has been said a thousand times but working in drugs or human trafficking could explain why no one seemed to openly know her.

Laundromat might also imply mobility. Guy with no arms is an interesting addition (if it's true). It's memorable and distinct..

 

[Alleykins]

I've only been there a few times too and mostly in passing. Im sure this has been mentioned before, but I have read Ohio a major location for human trafficking since it connect the midwest and east coast, has a lot of truck routes, and close connections to Canada. I know this has been said a thousand times but working in drugs or human trafficking could explain why no one seemed to openly know her.

Laundromat might also imply mobility. Guy with no arms is an interesting addition (if it's true). It's memorable and distinct..

Agreed, the possibility of her being seen with guy with no arms is interesting. I wonder if she were his caregiver and if they ever ID'd the guy.

 

[CarlK90245]

I went back and re-watched the video, and though I couldn't see the whole page of the report, I saw the description you were talking about. Not sure what to make of them. They appear to be tips they followed but possibly went nowhere. Looks like there may have been a lot of them?
It would be interesting if we could somehow get a map of all the places of folks who reported seeing her before she passed.

I'll put the visible parts of the report here, with names redacted. Bennington appears to be the Fairborn Ohio Police Department employee who took the tip. (the entire page is not completely visible, so the missing text is replaced with ellipses)

... of Springhill Nursery would like to see the pictures.

Bennington - Fairborn PD 879-1730 Ext. 302 advised a S_____ B_____ (1/2 Crazy)
... im he saw the girl three yrs. ago in a laundramat (sic) in Fairborn with
... r girl and guy with stubs for arms. Bennington advised that a lawyer
... ayton fits the no arm desc. [Address and Phone # Redacted]


W______ [Phone #] said he saw the girl matching desc. setting (sic) on p ...
... corner of Bartley and Dixie on 4/23 at approx. 1600 hrs. barefoot ...
... and pigtails

 

[annie970]

Thanks Carl!!!

 

[annie970]

https://i.imgur.com/n8jpn8S.png on the corner of Barley and Dixie is a restaurant/dive bar called Maggie's Place.. did some research and it sounds like it's been there since at least the 60's, so I think that's probably where the witness (allegedly) saw her. She was seen there at 4 pm on the day she is believed to have died. Could definitely support the domestic dispute theory IMO

Notes aren't clear enough to determine if she WAS or WAS NOT barefoot.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

guy with stubs for arms.

"Stubs" suggests to me that either his arms had been amputated above the elbows or (just possibly) something like Thalidomide. Thalidomide wasn't used in the US in the way it was in the UK but it was used in Canada. Thalidomide-affected babies were born between about 1957 and 1961, so they would have been aged 20-24 at the time of BG's murder. I wonder how old the man with "stubs" was.

For obvious reasons I wouldn't see him as a suspect.

 

[Alleykins]

"Stubs" suggests to me that either his arms had been amputated above the elbows or (just possibly) something like Thalidomide. Thalidomide wasn't used in the US in the way it was in the UK but it was used in Canada. Thalidomide-affected babies were born between about 1957 and 1961, so they would have been aged 20-24 at the time of BG's murder. I wonder how old the man with "stubs" was.

For obvious reasons I wouldn't see him as a suspect.

Still, I wonder if they were able to track him down and ask him about her? It would be interesting to know. Maybe she was his helper?

 

[annie970]

"Stubs" suggests to me that either his arms had been amputated above the elbows or (just possibly) something like Thalidomide. Thalidomide wasn't used in the US in the way it was in the UK but it was used in Canada. Thalidomide-affected babies were born between about 1957 and 1961, so they would have been aged 20-24 at the time of BG's murder. I wonder how old the man with "stubs" was.

For obvious reasons I wouldn't see him as a suspect.

Ive heard of this!

Its a long shot guess but if he was from the UK she might've been too, or travelling with him somehow. Always been hung up on her lack of identification from any one in any database in the US

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Ive heard of this!

Its a long shot guess but if he was from the UK she might've been too, or travelling with him somehow. Always been hung up on her lack of identification from any one in any database in the US

I would have thought that a British accent would have stood out a mile in rural Ohio and parts of the SW almost 40 years ago.

That said, from at least the mid-1970s many British students travelled to the US to work in the kids summer camps (the name Bunac (British Universities North America Club) comes to mind) and for other support-type projects, so it's not impossible that a British student might have been allocated as a helper to a disabled American. However if personal care was involved I would expect the sex of the helper to match that of the helpee since the helper wouldn't be a trained nurse or care assistant.

It would be useful to know approximately how old the armless man was. No doubt there are other congenital problems which could cause the same sorts of deformities, and if he was obviously older than, say, 30 then Thalidomide could be completely ruled out

 

[MelmothTheLost]

On the subject of Thalidomide:

Throughout the world, about 10,000 cases were reported of infants with phocomelia due to thalidomide; only 50% of the 10,000 survived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

So 5,000 affected babies survived. We can probably assume that half of them were female, so that leaves 2,500 males affected.

This is particularly interesting:

In the United States, pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey M.D. withstood pressure from the Richardson-Merrell company and refused Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to market thalidomide, saying further studies were needed.[SUP][48][/SUP] This reduced the impact of thalidomide in United States patients. Although thalidomide was never approved for sale in the United States at the time, over 2.5 million tablets had been distributed to over 1,000 physicians during a clinical testing program. It is estimated that nearly 20,000 patients, several hundred of whom were pregnant women, were given the drug to help alleviate morning sickness or as a sedative, and at least 17 children were consequently born in America with thalidomide-associated deformities.[SUP]

I had believed that the drug was never made available at all in the US but there were obviously a handful.

This might be worth looking into if possible.[/SUP]

 

[MelmothTheLost]

An interesting blog post on Thalidomide in the US:

On September 18, 1962, a baby boy was born in the small town of Brownfield, Texas. Immediately after he was born, doctors noted that the boy had serious and disfiguring birth defects. He was missing his right leg, including his foot. He had no fingers on his right hand and his right arm ended above the elbow.

https://blog.seattlepi.com/steveberman/2011/11/02/thalidomide-in-america/

Brownfield is in rural NW Texas near Lubbock, and is in the area identified from the pollen on the buckskin jacket as an area BG had visited in several times in the months prior to her death.

 

[annie970]

An interesting blog post on Thalidomide in the US:



https://blog.seattlepi.com/steveberman/2011/11/02/thalidomide-in-america/

Brownfield is in rural NW Texas near Lubbock, and is in the area identified from the pollen on the buckskin jacket as an area BG had visited in several times in the months prior to her death.

Incredible. Trying to look at brownfield high school yearbooks online but am struggling to find ones without a classmates account.