Identified! TN - Nashville, WhtFem 30’s UP10155, Leo pendant, poss from Chilton Co, AL, Mar'98 Diane Minor

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According to the new article on News Channel 5 Nashville, her colleagues or friends were wondering where she was and what happened to her, but somebody told them that she moved to Colorado.

www.newschannel5.com

Nashville woman identified in 26-year cold case

Family and friends are finally getting answers in a 26-year Nashville cold case concerning a woman named Diane Minor who went missing in the 1990's.
www.newschannel5.com www.newschannel5.com
 
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djanga said:
According to the new article on News Channel 5 Nashville, her colleagues or friends were wondering where she was and what happened to her, but somebody told them that she moved to Colorado.

www.newschannel5.com

Nashville woman identified in 26-year cold case

Family and friends are finally getting answers in a 26-year Nashville cold case concerning a woman named Diane Minor who went missing in the 1990's.
www.newschannel5.com www.newschannel5.com
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LE need to find out who was telling people that Diane moved to Colorado. IMO that's very suspicious.

It's still mind-boggling that someone with so many friends and colleagues wasn't identified. Even if they thought she had moved away, you'd think the discovery of her body would have caught the attention of somebody who knew her.
 
djanga said:
I love this photo of Diane!
eu.tennessean.com

Who was Diane Minor, the Leo Jane Doe pulled from Nashville's Cumberland River in 1998

Diane Minor, the woman identified 26 years later as the Leo Jane Doe, was an up-and-coming Nashville singer in the 1960s.
eu.tennessean.com

View attachment 518444
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She achieved at least local fame,if not more. Did several records. Lovely voice, catchy, highly professionally done songs.
I really wonder how noone missed her. She may have been estranged from family and hung out with a bohemian type crowd, reminiscing her bygone fame (the man she was seen with wore sort of the same type of eccentric clothing she did).
 
It's possible that Diane just liked the Sylvester & Tweety cartoons, but the Tweety Bird patch maybe makes sense knowing Diane was a singer--perhaps it could have even been a nickname?

Diane had lived in Nashville for a long time and had thousands of dollars worth of dental treatment. Did LE go to dentists in the area to see if any of them recognised Diane and/or their own work? If not, IMO they should have.

The more I think about this, the more I struggle to understand the failure to identify her. Diane wasn't a woman with no friends or family to miss her. She wasn't found hundreds or thousands of miles from where she had lived. She hadn't been in the water long enough to be unrecognisable. Her clothing was quite unique.

Everything makes it seem, on the surface, like it should have been easy.
 
And who hated her so much? She was shot, not strangled. If we assume her boyfriend (if we assume the sighting was indeed her and the guy she was seen with was indeed her boyfriend, matching clothing and style and all) did it, that MO would be unusual, though it has happened.
It also was not a robbery, obviously. Who did she associate with in the years before she died? Was she ever involved in any addiction? Did she still have some money from the recordings? I get some "fight over money or drugs/alcohol" vibe here, but of course that may be entirely wrong. We just do not know enough.
When did she lose contact with family and friends?

Jmoo
 
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Interested_But_Confused said:
It's possible that Diane just liked the Sylvester & Tweety cartoons, but the Tweety Bird patch maybe makes sense knowing Diane was a singer--perhaps it could have even been a nickname?

Diane had lived in Nashville for a long time and had thousands of dollars worth of dental treatment. Did LE go to dentists in the area to see if any of them recognised Diane and/or their own work? If not, IMO they should have.

The more I think about this, the more I struggle to understand the failure to identify her. Diane wasn't a woman with no friends or family to miss her. She wasn't found hundreds or thousands of miles from where she had lived. She hadn't been in the water long enough to be unrecognisable. Her clothing was quite unique.

Everything makes it seem, on the surface, like it should have been easy.
Click to expand...
From what I remember of the time, tweety bird, Sylvester, Mickey mouse and tinker Bell were all popular characters to put on athletic type pants. I grew up in the area and remember going to Walmart in 98 and being forced to buy a pair with tinker Bell on them because there were literally no plain athletic type pants. Remember when phrases were printed on the bottoms of pants, if you wanted to be declared "juicy" or not. Just not sure how much tweety has to do with it all, or if the fact those clothes were so popular that they would even be considered eccentric at the time. I haven't been able to confirm it yet, but I believe Diane was born in July, making her a Leo. She also appears to have a couple careers through her life. Makes me wonder if he disappearance was caused by those she lived with. It does seem it should've been solved by now.

As far as the dentists go, there are a ton in Nashville and many may have retired, but I agree, would've been a great lead.
 
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Interested_But_Confused said:
The more I think about this, the more I struggle to understand the failure to identify her. Diane wasn't a woman with no friends or family to miss her. She wasn't found hundreds or thousands of miles from where she had lived. She hadn't been in the water long enough to be unrecognisable. Her clothing was quite unique.

Everything makes it seem, on the surface, like it should have been easy.
Click to expand...

In retrospect, JMOO, the main reconstruction of the decedent was not really a good representation of what Diane looked like. Diane was 54 when she died and the reconstruction looks like someone in their 30’s. And to me it doesn’t resemble the PM photo either.

After seeing photos of what Diane actually looked like, I’m not surprised that she went unrecognized all this time if that reconstruction was all that we had to go on.
 
Susikatze said:
And who hated her so much? She was shot, not strangled. If we assume her boyfriend (if we assume the sighting was indeed her and the guy she was seen with was indeed her boyfriend, matching clothing and style and all) did it, that MO would be unusual, though it has happened.
It also was not a robbery, obviously. Who did she associate with in the years before she died? Was she ever involved in any addiction? Did she still have some money from the recordings? I get some "fight over money or drugs/alcohol" vibe here, but of course that may be entirely wrong. We just do not know enough.
When did she lose contact with family and friends?

Jmoo
Click to expand...
I believe the perpetrator is a violent individual who has harmed other people. There was a tip that came in during 1998 and that caller provided the identity of the individual he believed was Diane's killer. That individual stated that the killer was going to seriously injure/kill another person and wanted to stop him.
 
Grungster said:
I believe the perpetrator is a violent individual who has harmed other people. There was a tip that came in during 1998 and that caller provided the identity of the individual he believed was Diane's killer. That individual stated that the killer was going to seriously injure/kill another person and wanted to stop him.
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What was his connection to Diane?

So they knew in 1998 Diane was murdered? Why was she an UID? Did LE follow the tip? Probably the tipster knew the suspect murdered a woman but did not know her name. I really hope the suspect is still alive and LE will now review the 1998 tip and question the suspect.
 
Grungster said:
I believe the perpetrator is a violent individual who has harmed other people. There was a tip that came in during 1998 and that caller provided the identity of the individual he believed was Diane's killer. That individual stated that the killer was going to seriously injure/kill another person and wanted to stop him.
Click to expand...
Do you think they've murdered others? Maybe Diane was a witness to something? A famous country music fixture was murdered early in 98, maybe a connection there?
 
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"She was last known to have been a manager at the Second Story Café in Nashville in the early 1990s. A missing person report was never filed for Minor.
Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy with help from the MNPD Crime Lab, Bode Lab and the DNA Doe Project resulted in Minor's identification.
The investigation by MNPD Cold Case Homicide detectives is ongoing."


fox17.com

Cold Case: Nashville woman found dead in Cumberland River identified decades later

Decades after a woman's body was found in the Cumberland River, her identity is finally known.
fox17.com fox17.com
 
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I wonder if the friend who said she moved to Colorado was given that wrong/bad information from someone else and was not intentionally lying. Or maybe Diane did actually plan on moving to Colorado and told a few people that before she disappeared/was murdered.

MOO.
 
Who stood to benefit from her death?

Who inherited the rights to her royalties?

AFAIK there is nothing 'out there' about her for many years around 1965-90s, but two shots to the head, with no robbery or assault, seems like a pro-style 'hit.'

MOO - IANAE - YMMV - etc.
 
?!? said:
That article mentions two names that she was involved with ....turns out, they are the same guy: he used one name as a writer, the other as performer -- he was very 'big' in Nashville at the time:

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I noticed that too, one was his real name and the other his stage name.
Eta: they started a label together and worked with many artists. I'm sure those things were worked out before their divorce, and that's just me assuming they were divorced. She could've taken up with another fella or a friend/friends or something similar.

You ask great questions because someone murdered her for a reason. Why? Was she worth more dead? Was she a witness to another crime? Did she stand up to an unsavory character? Did she end up in some sort of addiction and get caught up in the wrong thing?

I think it's also easy to assume she might've gone by her married name for a time too. Though, coincidentally there is another person with the same name as her married name completely unrelated to her who lives in the same area and is of similar age, and that things tricky for me.
 
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