Yes, I thought the same! There are many Does who were identified and who were from one state but were found far away from where they were born, because they traveled there when they were adults.
Good possibilities to investigate that you brought up. In the obituary of the mother of Mowry Jane Doe it mentioned mother was 2nd youngest of 9 children and all preceded her in death. Could be this child, our Jane Doe, was even given to an older sibling to raise and no one knew but that one sibling involved knew. It's happened in families where a child's real birth mother was an older sister, aunt, etc. Maybe she was raised by a teenage birth father's family. There may be no legal records as there would be in an adoption in these scenarios. But there should be some record of Jane Doe's birth in the mother's maiden name or first marriage name whether sealed in adoption or not.
Right, like Buckskin Girl found a few miles from me in Troy Ohio. She was first person they ID'd using genetic genealogy. She was from Arkansas but pollen analysis of her clothing indicated she traveled all over the country, and wound up murdered and left in a roadside ditch in Ohio. All this got LE nowhere in identifying her until genetic genealogy Websleuths has a page for her.
The Baby Holly Marie Clouse case was cracked in a similar way, hopefully they will have similar luck here.
In legal adoptions I thought original birth certificate is sealed and new b/c is issued in adopted child's new legal name. I thought of another scenario. What if Jane Doe is a year younger and mother was pregnant again at first marriage and it was agreed to give that child up to adoption as well. Whatever the scenario it must have been hard on bio mother.
One of those surviving children is the adopted half sister found by DNA Doe Project according to article posted here. So one adopted daughter is mentioned in obit of mother but our Jane Doe is not. Maybe mother did not know where she wound up or she did and did not want it known. Hope there's an identity eventually. I'm sure LE detectives are on to all possibilities here.
“They helped lead me down that path of who the mother of our Jane Doe might be,” Nobbe told KTVU of the combined effort.
lawandcrime.com
Possibly, but the postmortem interval was stated to have been "years", so I guess the definitive answer would depend on whenever she was last seen (obviously that info would only come when she is IDed).
