Thursday night on “Dateline” on NBC, the nation learned about a unique story, where three people who looked up ancestry data turned into amateur detectives to find an identity.
The background: A woman was found on an oil lease off Fritz Swanson Road north of Texas 31 on Oct. 29, 2006. She was deceased, and her body was facedown in a burning woodpile.
No one in Longview, or even across the nation, was looking for someone who matched her unique description. She was a Jane Doe and was buried in Longview on Dec. 23, 2006.
The late Jimmy Isaac, a reporter with the Longview News-Journal at the time, wrote in a past article that, “Unlike most cases, investigators worked backward to learn their victim’s identity after learning who ‘the bad guy’ was.”
That sentence was the focus of the “Dateline” episode.
“We had a confession, but we didn’t know the name of the victim. That’s not the way it’s supposed to go,” retired Gregg County sheriff’s Lt. Eddie Hope said during the episode.
The show, called “The Woman with No Name,” aired Thursday and is available to watch online.
Amateur internet investigators Kevin Lord, Lori Gaff and Missy Koski along with now-DNA Doe Project’s Margaret Press were featured during the show.
The story went on to explain how they helped track down Amanda Gadd, the half-sister of Dana Lynn Dodd.
The search was over. Dana Lynn Dodd was Lavender Doe.
Anderson: The community that never forgot Lavender Doe
