Identified! OH - Cleveland, WhtFem UP15630, 22-28, in factory boiler room, Jul'84 - Name withheld

[Romulus]

NamUs UP 15630

https://identifyus.org/en/cases/15630

Unidentified White Female
Found July 3, 1984 in Cuyahoga County, OH
Body Condition: Not recognizable - decomposition/putrefaction
Probable year of death: 1984 (2 months)

Vital Statistics
Estimated age: 22-28 (Adult - Pre 30)
Approximate Height: 65 estimate.
Approximate Weight: cannot estimate.
Hair Color: Brown; straight brown hair
Eye Color: Unknown
Clothing & Accessories

Clothing: Sleeveless sweater top; light colored bra; Open-toed white sandal on right foot; other sandal found near remains
Jewerly: White metal ring on ring finger of right hand.
Footwear: nothing
Accessories: nothing

Identifiers
Fingerprints: Fingerprint information is currently not available
Dentals: Dental information / charting is available and entered
DNA: Sample is currently not available

Case History: An employee of the then-Madison Equipment Company at 777 E. 82nd St., Cleveland, was lured to the south stairwell by three children stating there was a kitten in the boiler room of the factory. 3 employees went to verify the children's story and found the body. Cleveland PD was called

 

[creepedout]

No one in Namus matching this description from that time/area. Checking elsewhere...

 

[WyomingSkyAngel]

How nefarious. I wonder if the killer had set up the kids to tell the "kitten" story in order to have the body found at a time convenient for him or her.

I'd also look at employees & relatives of employees regarding the body- who would be so confident that something like a body would go undiscovered until basically pointed out? Seems very suspicious.

 

[macrauchenia]

Oh, yes, that is horrible. I definitely would have been one to bound down to the boiler room, expecting to find a kitten or two in need of help, what an awful shock to find a dead human! Creepy creepy creepy!

 

[JanetElaine]

It is so depressing that most of the information, if available at all, couldn't be more vague if they tried. Was the body immediately visible when the employees went into the boiler room? How was it positioned? Anything pointing to it possibly being accidental (i.e. teens sneaking in at night as a dare or whatever)? Anything pointing to foul play? No clothing at all on or nearby the body except what was listed? Color of the top? Why no pictures of the clothing and the ring? I could go on and on...

 

[nerosleuth]

It is so depressing that most of the information, if available at all, couldn't be more vague if they tried.

Was the body immediately visible when the employees went into the boiler room?

How was it positioned? Anything pointing to it possibly being accidental (i.e. teens sneaking in at night as a dare or whatever)?

Anything pointing to foul play?

No clothing at all on or nearby the body except what was listed?

Color of the top?

Why no pictures of the clothing and the ring?

I could go on and on...

Taking into account that a body was found in a boiler room during the summer time, I agree the info is pretty vague.

Was the boiler in the boiler room in use during the summer?

Was there a furnance in the boiler room?

Was the body burned or scaled?

Was a key needed to enter the boiler room?

I too could go on and on.

 

[Romulus]

From crimewatchers site forum

 

[nova scotia sleuth]

Vicki maynard?


Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

 

[Romulus]

Vicki maynard?

Her thread

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?373172-OH-Vicki-Maynard-26-Union-1-April-1981

 

[iulia]

https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Law-Enforcement/Investigator/Unidentified-Remains/Doe-3026

The NamUs page gives a permission error for this UID.

 

[MadMcGoo]

This NamUs page is still not working...

 

[iulia]

The Crimes of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

Samuel Little confessed to killing 93 women on society's margins, including four in Northeast Ohio. The FBI says he is the most prolific serial killer in American history.

clevelandmagazine.com

[...]
Three workers at the Madison Equipment Co. factory on East 82nd Street noticed the smell a little before 1 p.m. on July 3, 1984. They had descended into the boiler room of the factory to look for a lost cat. Stinking liquid had seeped in through a crack under an exterior door, which opened into an outside stairwell. For months, workers in the factory had passed near the door as they went to and from their cars in the nearby parking lot. No one had noticed anything amiss.

They went outside and looked into the 6-foot-deep stairwell, overgrown by ivy and weeds. She laid there at the bottom of the stairs, her face toward the heavens, legs and arms splayed at odd angles. Her body was decomposing, crawling with maggots. She wore a sandal on her right foot. Her sweater and bra had been pulled around her shoulders. She wore a ring on her right pinkie and was nude from the waist down.

Detectives swarmed the scene in their dark suits, taking photographs. Her body was taken to the coroner’s office. Samuel Gerber, the coroner, believed she was a slender white woman between 26 and 28 years old. She had likely died in May or June. The cause of death was “undetermined.” In the name field, and on her fingerprint card, she was listed as “unknown white female,” “unidentified,” “found in outside basement stairwell.”

Police thought she may have jumped from the roof, until they learned the factory’s alarm system hadn’t tripped. They ran her fingerprints and tried to match her with missing persons reports. But they didn’t turn up a name.

Years passed, and the investigation continued. In October, police released a reconstruction of her face to The Plain Dealer and looked into tips. In 1987 and 1990, detectives tried to match her against missing persons reports from Florida and Indiana, and checked against dental records and in the National Crime Information Center. Nothing.

In 1992, a detective noticed that, “due to some oversight,” the victim’s fingerprints had been entered into Cleveland Police’s fingerprint database, but not the national one. The fingerprint card, with clear impressions of the woman’s right thumb, was sent to the FBI.

The next month, a letter arrived from Quantico, Virginia. They had found a match. Information about the woman was scarce. Her file painted a picture of desperate circumstances. She had been arrested a couple of times in Cleveland, once in 1981 for prostitution. She was 18. Her jail booking card described her as “possible [sic] suicidal.” She was arrested again for soliciting in 1982, in the area of East 100th Street and Cedar Avenue. She appeared to be from Kentucky. The police assessment in the file had been cruel: “appears to be retarded or very slow.”

Cleveland Police had filed the case in 1984 under the cause of death from the coroner: “undetermined.” But now police had a name to put on their reports: Mary Joe Peyton.