CT CT - Bridgeport, BlkFem 25-35, UP14478, badly burned in empty lot, near the body: one ASICS shoe, one Reebok shoe, Jun'93

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Could it be Lisa Hall from Massachusetts? http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/h/hall_lisa.html
Missing from Massachusetts (2.5 hours away from Bridgeport, CT) since 12/31/92. 27 years old, 5'4".

Updated Link for Lisa Hall: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

I never heard back from the Doe Project. Lisa and this Jane Doe aren't listed as comparisons on each other's NamUs pages, so I guess Doe Project didn't think it was worth submitting to LE.

 

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On June 5, 1993, the severely burned body of a black female was found in a vacant lot at Lafayette Street and Railroad Avenue. She was estimated to be between five foot one and five foot four and the ages of 25 to 35. Because of the damage to her body the composite sketch pictured here may not be accurate.

https://www.facebook.com/ColdCasesReopened/posts/851700961529102

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hm there seems to be quite a lot of female murders happening around Bridgeport area

The image on the right in this post is actually a potential suspect who bought gasoline in the area around that time.

 

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Interesting article from May 2007 with some more details:

Bridgeport 'Jane Doe' Killer Remains a Mystery​

[td]By DAWN A. MICELI, Corresponden[/td]

“Jane Doe” was someone’s daughter, and someone may have even referred to her as “Mom.” Her ghastly demise 14 years ago seemingly eradicated every trace of her identity. A “missing person” search failed her as well. The last blow may well be the ambiguity that surrounds her cause of death, labeled in police files as “pending.”
“As far as I’m concerned, I say she was murdered,” said Bridgeport Police Detective Heitor Teixeira, an 18-year veteran who is currently assigned to cold cases in the department. “We figured she was a drug carrier, and probably not even from this area – I wish that we had more. It’d be nice to have some closure.”
It is that closure aspect that is compelling Teixeira to reinvestigate the meager evidence initially recovered from the site where Jane Doe’s charred body was found. Even a recent setback in the case – the body has now been buried by the chief medical examiner’s office after having lain in the state morgue for 10 years – has done little to deter the detective from exploring all avenues. Exhumation of the body for updated forensic testing is a possibility.
A 911 fire call came in to the Bridgeport Fire Department at about 5:30 a.m. on June 5, 1993. Two people smelled smoke near where they worked and called to report it. Emergency crews responded to a vacant parking lot at Lafayette Street and Railroad Avenue, an overgrown area right near the highway that sported the ripest kind of kindling: brush, tall grass, and small trees. The fire had been burning for a while.
Once the flames were under control, firefighters came upon a gruesome discovery. Amid the debris that littered the area were the charred remains of a faceless body, the hands and feet burned away from the stumps that remained in the regions where there once were arms and legs.
In the police report, first responders reported the overpowering smell of gasoline emanating from the area. A book of matches was found near the body, as well as an antifreeze jug containing some gasoline. The victim had been doused with the fuel and set on fire.
Michael Kerwin, a former Bridgeport police sergeant who had worked on the case, recalled the intense heat that so engulfed the body that investigators were never able to learn whether the victim died before the fire or during it. “They (her killer or killers) had to flip her over a couple of times for being that burned,” said Kerwin, who now works for the state’s attorney’s office in Fairfield. “She was rolled over and doused again and again.”
Bridgeport police had to secure the services of a forensic anthropologist just to ascertain some of the basic genetic makeup of the victim. According to Teixeira, that person was Dr. Albert Harper, the executive director of the Dr. Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science.
Harper determined that Jane Doe was probably a black female, between the ages of 25 and 35, with a slight build, between five-foot-one and five-foot-four. A composite facial reconstruction was never an option for the department because of the condition of the corpse.
An investigation by the fire marshal’s office confirmed that “gas or accelerant type materials (were) used to cause the fire.” At 5:30 in the morning, police say there were not many gas stations open in the area, save for the one on Park Avenue and State Street. There, a station attendant recalled two men who had come in with a beer bottle, requesting that it be filled with gasoline. The attendant refused; but 15 to 20 minutes later, the men were back with an antifreeze jug and purchased one dollar’s worth of gas. They chucked the beer bottle into the station’s trash can.
The attendant was able to provide police with details on the two men: one was a black male of average height and build in his late teens to early 20s. His companion was said to be a Hispanic male of similar height, build, and age. A department sketch artist came up with two composite drawings of the suspects, but the investigation failed to locate the men, let alone bring up charges on anyone.
No one ever came looking for Jane Doe, and a nationwide “missing person” search failed to garner a match. “We had dozens and dozens of ‘hits’ come back from across the country, but nothing ever matched,” said Kerwin. “There was always something wrong – like the eye color or something.”
However, a case currently in the news triggered Kerwin’s memory of the young woman who was never identified. Emanuel Lovell Webb is charged with killing four women in Bridgeport during the same timeframe as Jane Doe’s death. Webb was extradited from Georgia by authorities in Connecticut, and Kerwin figured he should be questioned about the burn victim as well – just in case. “When they brought him back here, I told Teixeira to ask him about this girl,” Kerwin said. “If he’s going to start spilling his guts, they may as well ask about her.”
That idea did not pan out, but it did compel Teixeira to reexamine whatever evidence there was in the 14-year-old case. He saw that as of 1998, the body was still at the chief medical examiner’s office in Farmington. A subsequent call to the office revealed that in 2003, the body was buried in Bloomfield at the expense of a local funeral home. According to a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner, the State of Connecticut does not have a “pauper’s grave.” In addition, “We do not cremate someone who is unidentified,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to give her name. “She was kept here 10 years.” The spokeswoman added that a court order would allow for the body to be disinterred.
Even with the body, said Elaine Pagliaro, the assistant director of the state’s forensic laboratory in Meriden, someone from Jane Doe’s past would have had to have reported her missing. “If there are no relatives who submitted samples, we could put it in (the database) and never get a hit,” Pagliaro said. “To identify an unknown individual, there needs to be some record of that person.”
Even without a body, there is other evidence that can be examined, Teixeira said. There were fingerprints on the beer bottle and on the matchbook recovered at the scene. “That’s probably the most compelling thing we have,” said Teixeira. Several teeth were also preserved, “and that’s another avenue we can look into,” he said. The detective also plans to contact Harper, the original forensic anthropologist, to enlist his aid in the reexamination of evidence.
Kerwin agrees the passing of time may have been enough to create a new opening in the case. “Forensics has come a long way since then, and there are samples on file,” he said. “That one was always – ‘Who was that girl?’ It was just a lonely south-end lot.” Jane Doe, buried in a nameless plot in
Bloomfield, without so much as a date of birth or next of kin to define her lineage or indeed her existence, died 14 years ago. Her case is still very much “open,” and anyone with any possible clues is asked to contact the Bridgeport police.

Good to know there are fingerprints on the beer bottle and the matchbook at the scene, and that they have Jane Doe's teeth to potentially match dental records. It's interesting that the article doesn't mention the 2 sneakers found at the scene, since NamUs and other sources do.

The article makes me think of many questions, such as:

• Why did LE think Jane Doe was a drug mule who wasn't from the area?
• Where was the book of matches from, if it had any identifying marks on it?
• Where is the sketch of the Hispanic man who was with the Black man (in sketch above) when they bought the gasoline?
• Did they investigate local gangs to see if any members looked like the 2 men, since they were apparently quite young?
• Why didn't the idea of asking Emanuel Lovell Webb about the case pan out?
• If they had dozens of hits from a nationwide search but nothing ever matched, why are there no exclusions listed on NamUs?

 

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Here is the location where Jane Doe was found -- as of July, there's still a vacant lot at that intersection and a commercial parking lot across the street.

Here's the gas station where the men bought the gasoline. It's currently a Sunoco but not sure what it was back then.

The 2 locations are only 0.6 miles apart -- a 2-minute drive or 14-minute walk.

 

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Thanks for the reply... I really hope we can get this woman named... Were there any other missing females reported near this area at this time besides ms hall? Im new to this sort of thing... And very pregnant lol so time is not my friend right now but i would like to learn how to do more for these cold cases.... If anyone can teach me some ways to do so that would be helpful.

Yes, there were several cases of murdered women around the same time, within an area of about a mile in Bridgeport -- there's a good rundown in the article that @MadMcGoo linked below. Several of the cases have different MOs, though.

Bringing this link over from another thread, courtesy of @Palisades.

The Hour

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Several women were also killed around that time by the "East End Killer," Emanuel Lovell Webb, who lived in Bridgeport. He strangled a woman in Bridgeport and then set her on fire in 1990 -- I wonder how they ruled him out on this Bridgeport Jane Doe case, since those MOs are very similar? Could he have been the Black man who bought the gasoline? He looks really similar to the sketch:

I think that Barbara Heyward Manners, found burned in Westport (2 towns over from Bridgeport) in a vacant lot near the highway, is also a close case in terms of MO. I wouldn't be surprised if she was another Webb case. But Barbara was killed 8 years before BJD, so if the men who bought the gasoline were truly in their teens / 20s, they would have been very young. It's possible the gas station attendant misjudged their ages -- maybe they just looked young for their ages. Webb was 27 in 1993 when BJD was killed and 19 in 1985 when Barbara was killed, so his timing would align in a way that seems feasible.

Another woman was found in another vacant lot in Bridgeport just 2 days after BJD but she was stabbed, not burned. The article mentions a bit about BJD: