Identified! OH - Toledo, WhtFem 16-21, 335UFOH, burned, 5 pearl studs per ear, Jun'87 - Tammy Lowe

[othram]

We are really grateful to The Porchlight Project for funding our work in this case. Without their support, the case would have not been solved.

 

[Alleykins]

We are really grateful to The Porchlight Project for funding our work in this case. Without their support, the case would have not been solved.

Thank you for all you do, @othram

 

[MrsWatson]

Burned body found in 1987 in Ohio identified as missing Wayne County teen

The burned remains of a woman found in Toledo in 1987 have been identified as a missing woman from Taylor.

www.clickondetroit.com

 

[Bounceycat]

Glad Tammy got her name back. Do we know if anyone ever reported her missing? 18 is heartbreakingly young.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

 

[beubeubeu]

Anyone saw anything what could be considered as the source of this?

"Lowe was last seen in the first week of June 1987 by her younger sister in Detroit, Michigan. Lowe's sister stated that she and Lowe were at a local drug dealer's house and she managed to escape, but Lowe was still there and forcibly being administered drugs by at least one person. Despite the suspicious circumstances of her disappearance and being reported missing twice by her grandmother, the police never formally recorded Lowe as a missing person. At the time, Lowe's sister lived with their grandmother and younger brother in Taylor, Michigan, where Lowe herself would sometimes reside."

It's from her unidentified wiki page.
I guess it was impossible to test and tell how badly was she SA'd before or while she was being murdered. Just my opinion that she was and that was the reason why they went so far with concealing her identity.

 

[Danglingcarkeys]

Anyone saw anything what could be considered as the source of this?


It's from her unidentified wiki page.
I guess it was impossible to test and tell how badly was she SA'd before or while she was being murdered. Just my opinion that she was and that was the reason why they went so far with concealing her identity.

Someone in the edit history of her page claims (emphasis on claims) he is her nephew, so it could be from him. The edit history is a bit confusing tho, he may've not been the one to add that section. Inline citations are rarely used on the wiki as there's more emphasis on linking approved sources.

Edit: Forgot to mention, most sections are made up of information from multiple articles making it difficult to inline cite unless you were the one who added the info.

 

[The4TierBridge]

Someone in the edit history of her page claims (emphasis on claims) he is her nephew, so it could be from him. The edit history is a bit confusing tho, he may've not been the one to add that section. Inline citations are rarely used on the wiki as there's more emphasis on linking approved sources.

That user has uploaded a bunch of scanned photos of her that weren’t available before so I’m inclined to believe him.

 

[beubeubeu]

Thanks, I thought I my be missing some parts of linked articles cause of paywall or some kind of error.

Not sure if I can discuss it as a source here but I sure don't believe drug addicts or some random people witnessing overdose would go farther than:
a) running away,
b) dumping a body relatively close to where accident happened,
c) attempting to hide a body few miles away.

Nobody is putting a plastic bag over somebody's head and trying to burn the body if what they're hiding isn't much worse than what it looks like. In my opinion.
Overdose is already the best way of hiding a murder so they had to hide much more than murder. Again, in my opinion.

 

[MolotovCockatiel]

Hey all, I'm the aforementioned nephew of Tammy Lowe. (I have no way to prove this other than I can share some scans of documents given to us by the Toledo Police with a limited amount of individuals, provided that I could be assured that they won't be disseminated) Sorry for replying so late to this thread, hopefully I can be forgiven for that.
I am indeed the one who provided the details on the Wiki about Tammy's family life and living situation as well as many of the technical details such as when the police were called and when they arrived. The former came from my own father, which I can't really cite as a source on the Wiki, and the latter came from investigator's reports, autopsy reports, forensic toxicology reports, etc. the detectives gave us when they visited us to get a DNA sample from my father. I'm not a fan of Unidentified Wiki's citation system either, but I figured it would've been more jarring to put proper citations unlike the rest of the site so I elected not to do that.

Nobody is putting a plastic bag over somebody's head and trying to burn the body if what they're hiding isn't much worse than what it looks like. In my opinion.
Overdose is already the best way of hiding a murder so they had to hide much more than murder. Again, in my opinion.

We very much believe that Tammy's death was intentional, just based on the circumstances of her disappearance and the nature of the person she was last seen alive with. Now, her autopsy report stated that she had a concentration of 0.93mg/dl of cocaine in her blood - this is a lethal amount. This was not an accident, but she did objectively die of an overdose. In reference to this being used to possibly cover up a murder, as horrifying as it is to say, we believe that the overdose was the method of murder.

Due to the lack of evidence (since both A. the fire destroyed a lot of evidence and B. the passage of time has ensured a lot of useful evidence has been lost), the Toledo Police has to officially rule it an overdose and they've said they're putting this somewhere between an accident and a homicide. They don't believe that Tammy did this to herself, this is a ruling of technicality. Since the man we believe most likely did this to Tammy has been dead since 2000, the Toledo Police aren't reopening the case. It is tragic, but I do believe that the ire should be reserved for the Detroit Police, who were told in no uncertain terms that Tammy was missing, that she was last seen alive being held captive against her will with a known violent drug dealer in Detroit, and they chose to do nothing. Even when my great-grandmother reported her missing a second time in October 1987, they still did nothing. Not even doing the bare minimum of registering my aunt as a missing person. It is because of their lack of due diligence that now my family has to face accusations of not caring about Tammy, that is why we now have to deal with questioning from those who don't know any better why she was a Jane Doe for so long. It is also why my aunt will never see justice.

Sorry for the long message, I wanted to thank you guys for taking an interest in my aunt's story long before she was identified and I wanted to clear up some things. Feel free to ask me anything.

 

[summergirl1]

Michigan man uploads his DNA profile, helps find his missing aunt miles away in Ohio

www-cleveland19-com.cdn.ampproject.org

 

[Melt71]

Hey all, I'm the aforementioned nephew of Tammy Lowe. (I have no way to prove this other than I can share some scans of documents given to us by the Toledo Police

........

Sorry for the long message, I wanted to thank you guys for taking an interest in my aunt's story long before she was identified and I wanted to clear up some things. Feel free to ask me anything.

My condolences to you and your family. There is a way to prove (not publicly) to the admins here that you are legitimately related to Tammy, one of the admins will likely jump in here with the link to become a Verified Insider.

This was such an awful case and clearly so many things could have been done better. Thank goodness for modern identification techniques and that your Dad agreed to that DNA test. While there is no closure, I hope the knowledge that Tammy has been found and that people - random people in the oddest of places in some cases - really did care and tried to give her name back.

 

[MolotovCockatiel]

........ There is a way to prove (not publicly) to the admins here that you are legitimately related to Tammy, one of the admins will likely jump in here with the link to become a Verified Insider.

I suppose that was strange to say in hindsight, but in my defense, I was worried I was going to be accused of lying. For clarification's sake, most of the documents are from when it was still the "Toledo Jane Doe" case and I would've only privately shared one or two relevant pages with nothing personally revealing. For the record, I'd feel much more comfortable being verified.

My condolences to you and your family. [...] This was such an awful case and clearly so many things could have been done better. Thank goodness for modern identification techniques and that your Dad agreed to that DNA test. While there is no closure, I hope the knowledge that Tammy has been found and that people - random people in the oddest of places in some cases - really did care and tried to give her name back.

Thank you so much, I dearly appreciate it. Just to be clear, it was my dad's DNA that was used as a final confirmation, the initial identification was made through my DNA, which was on the FamilyTreeDNA database. I specifically uploaded it and allowed law enforcement to access it in the hopes my missing aunt could be identified if she was a Jane Doe out there - turns out that's exactly what would happen. I would've stayed quiet otherwise were it not for two things - one, giving other families hope that their loved ones could be found even decades later and two, to vindicate my family being blamed for the police's failings. My great-grandmother didn't write letters to Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted just for strangers on the internet to insist that nobody cared about my aunt.

 

[iamshadow21]

I suppose that was strange to say in hindsight, but in my defense, I was worried I was going to be accused of lying. For clarification's sake, most of the documents are from when it was still the "Toledo Jane Doe" case and I would've only privately shared one or two relevant pages with nothing personally revealing. For the record, I'd feel much more comfortable being verified.

Thank you so much, I dearly appreciate it. Just to be clear, it was my dad's DNA that was used as a final confirmation, the initial identification was made through my DNA, which was on the FamilyTreeDNA database. I specifically uploaded it and allowed law enforcement to access it in the hopes my missing aunt could be identified if she was a Jane Doe out there - turns out that's exactly what would happen. I would've stayed quiet otherwise were it not for two things - one, giving other families hope that their loved ones could be found even decades later and two, to vindicate my family being blamed for the police's failings. My great-grandmother didn't write letters to Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted just for strangers on the internet to insist that nobody cared about my aunt.

I'm not a mod, but here's the thread with the details about the verification process: Verification Process for Professional or Insider Posters

 

[sls314]

I suppose that was strange to say in hindsight, but in my defense, I was worried I was going to be accused of lying. For clarification's sake, most of the documents are from when it was still the "Toledo Jane Doe" case and I would've only privately shared one or two relevant pages with nothing personally revealing. For the record, I'd feel much more comfortable being verified.

Thank you so much, I dearly appreciate it. Just to be clear, it was my dad's DNA that was used as a final confirmation, the initial identification was made through my DNA, which was on the FamilyTreeDNA database. I specifically uploaded it and allowed law enforcement to access it in the hopes my missing aunt could be identified if she was a Jane Doe out there - turns out that's exactly what would happen. I would've stayed quiet otherwise were it not for two things - one, giving other families hope that their loved ones could be found even decades later and two, to vindicate my family being blamed for the police's failings. My great-grandmother didn't write letters to Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted just for strangers on the internet to insist that nobody cared about my aunt.

I'm sorry for your family's loss, but I'm also glad you have some answers and were able to bring your aunt home.

I live in Toledo and had been hoping for many years that she'd be identified one day. (As you can probably tell, since I first posted in this thread back in 2011 with some newspaper article links.)

The verification process is fairly easy and straightforward - just follow the link that the other poster shared above.

Again, my condolences to your family.