5 Unknown Murder Victims Who Were Later Identified

hey everyone nigel and luke here and welcome to crime zone though it's generally a given that law enforcement has to identify the perpetrator of a crime in some cases they're also forced to identify the victim this is most often seen in murder cases where any number of factors can lead to a body being unrecognizable without knowing a victim's name police are often left without a clear direction in their investigation lacking vital clues about everything from suspects to potential witnesses it's no wonder therefore that many of these cases drag on for years or even decades requiring innovative techniques extreme dedication and usually at least a little bit of luck to finally solve today we wanted to take a look at a few examples of these types of cases focusing on murders featuring john and jane does who were later successfully identified though the perpetrators in all of today's cases have not necessarily been found investigators have at least managed to discover the names of the victims giving family and friends vital closure before we get to our list don't forget to subscribe to crime zone for more true crime content like this making sure to hit the notification bell to stay up to date with our latest videos with that out of the way here are five unknown murder victims who were later identified though the case wasn't the result of a murder the more than 20-year search for the identity of the man nicknamed the grateful doe is still one of the most interesting john doe cases we have come across we decided to include it on this week's list after it was recently requested by one of our viewers on june 26 1995 a tragic car accident resulted in the death of two men in greenville county virginia the men had been traveling along route 58 in a volkswagen van again when the vehicle struck a pair of trees on the side of the highway neither man was wearing a seatbelt because there were no drugs or alcohol in either man's system police believed that the driver may have lost control of the van after falling asleep at the wheel while the driver's family was able to identify him as 21 year old michael hager they had no idea who he had been traveling with the head wounds the mystery passenger had sustained during the crash added to the difficulty of identifying him however there were some useful clues found at the scene in addition to two small amateur looking tattoos the man also had a pair of scalped grateful dead tickets from the previous two days and was wearing one of the band's t-shirts the biggest clue of all was a note found with the body that read jason sorry we had to go see around call me carolyn t and caroline oh bye the note was also listed with a phone number with a 914 area code due to the evidence found at the scene the unidentified man later became known as jason doe or the grateful doe police estimated that the grateful doe was between 15 and 21 years old and may have been picked up by haggar while hitchhiking haggar was also a fan of the grateful dead and could have picked up the unidentified man because of what he was wearing though the man's face was too damaged from the crash to release photos of the public a facial reconstruction was later done and circulated over 200 missing people were ruled out in the search for the identity of the grateful doe despite an abundance of details little more about the man's identity would be discovered over the following years the number provided on the note found with the grateful deal returned no results and the carolines were never identified likewise dna dental and fingerprint records in law enforcement databases did not return a match to the doe in 2012 a much better facial reconstruction was created by the national center for missing and exploited children using the latest technology this image began to circulate online amongst groups on reddit facebook and sites like web slus until a user named greymetal posted the image along with several other details from the case to the photo sharing site imjer in 2014. this led to the biggest break in the case yet when in 2015 a person who claimed to be a former roommate of the unidentified man responded to the post the roommate claimed that he and several others had lived with the man in late 1994 to early 1995 near the university of illinois just like in the letter the roommate had also known the man by the name jason and although he did not know his last name he was able to provide photos and said that jason had been a huge grateful dead fan in 1995 jason had left illinois and the roommate had not heard from him since he believed that jason was originally from myrtle beach south carolina the photos the roommate provided bore a striking resemblance to the facial reconstruction image created in 2012. a short time later news of the update in the grateful doe case finally made its way to a woman named marguerita evans she turned out to be the unknown man's mother evans identified him as jason patrick callahan who was indeed originally from myrtle beach she claimed that though she had never stopped looking for her son she had never filled out a missing persons report because he was a frequent runaway and that she had not known where to report him missing a dna test confirmed the identification and after more than 20 years the mystery of the grateful doe was finally put to rest in the early hours of october 29 2006 two men walking through the grounds of an oil lease property in kilgore texas came across something strange there was a fire and some brush up ahead and what looked like a burning mannequin given the time of year the men initially thought that they might have stumbled upon an early halloween prank until a disturbing smell caught their attention it turned out to be the charred body of a young woman when investigators arrived on the scene they discovered that they were already dealing with a tough situation though it was estimated that the woman's body had been doused in gasoline and set ablaze only a short time before the discovery the fire had worked quickly and the woman was unrecognizable however there were some vital clues found at the scene the victim had remarkably perfect teeth including some baby teeth an unusual thing for her age which was estimated to be between 17 and 25. semen was also discovered in the woman's body indicating that she may have been sexually assaulted before her death though much of her clothing had been lost to the fire a pale purple sweater was recovered the garment would later give rise to her nickname the lavender doe though there were hopes that someone would come forward looking for the young woman police got no such luck the best lead in the case they had was to a potential killer a man named joseph wayne burnett burnett was a convicted sex offender whose dna had come back as a match to the semen found on the unidentified woman however he said that he had only picked up the woman for sex and claimed no further involvement with nothing tying their suspect to the actual crime police had hit a dead end though burnett remained a suspect in the years that followed few other promising leads emerged though investigators compared the lavender does dna and distinctive dental records with numerous missing persons cases they could find no matches however the investigation continued in full force online where it had captured the attention of various amateur detectives in true crime addicts who became obsessed with identifying the lavender doe and solving her murder one of these people eventually brought the case to the dna doe project a volunteer organization dedicated to identifying unknown deceased persons using forensic genealogy the non-profit agreed to assist on the lavender doe case in 2018. the same year that the doe project got involved police also got their biggest break in the case yet in july a woman named felicia pearson turned up dead she happened to be the girlfriend of joseph burnett this time police found burnett much more eager to talk to them he not only confessed to pearson's murder but also admitted that he had been behind the murder of the lavender doe unfortunately burnett had little in the way of useful information to offer investigators about the young woman's identity he said that he had picked her up in the parking lot of a local walmart after she had approached him to try and sell magazines he claimed that they had agreed to have sex but then at some point she had stolen money from him so he strangled her burnett said that the woman's name might have been ashley without any leads on the lavender doe's identity from the killer it would be up to the volunteers at the doe project to solve the mystery through their tireless efforts they were successful in 2019 after building out an extensive family tree using familial matches found on the public genealogy website ged match the volunteers tracked down a first cousin once removed who lived just 30 miles away from where the lavender doe had been found using this information they were eventually able to figure out the name of a woman who they believed was the doe's mother which led them to the dough herself her name was dana lynn dodd she had been just 21 years old at the time of her murder through the process of discovering dana's identity volunteers inevitably unearthed the tragic story of her life her mother had struggled with addiction issues and had left shortly after dana had been born her father had followed suit and was believed to be homeless dana had lived with a stepmother up until the age of 14 when she was sent to live with an older half-sister in florida during this time she struggled with addiction issues of her own dropping out of high school and moving from her sister's house to a half-brother's house and eventually into a place with her best friend she had left this last known residence after her friend had become pregnant and wanted to clean up her life and keep the child dana decided to leave town and join a traveling magazine sales crew it was the last time her family ever heard from her joseph wayne brunette was indicted for the murder of daniel in dawn in 2018 and is currently awaiting trial on the morning of november 18 1968 a pennsylvania state trooper noticed something strange on the side of the highway in chester county about a mile east of the downington interchange when he went to investigate he discovered the body of a young man slumped in a seated position against a tree his cause of death was a single stab wound to the chest which had pierced his heart his face was covered with a navy peacoat though the man carried no id he had a distinctive tattoo on his upper right arm the tattoo featured a bulldog wearing a first world war helmet with the lettering of the united states marine corps under it though the marking was enough to identify him as a possible member of the military it was not enough for authorities to find the man's name he was eventually buried at the longwood cemetery in kennett square pennsylvania the unknown man would come to be known as the bulldog john doe sparking a mystery that would last for more than 40 years at the same time that this was happening a family in massachusetts was desperately in search for their son twenty-year-old marine corporal robert daniel corvo had disappeared from a naval hospital in philadelphia and was thought to be a deserter corvo had served two tours in vietnam burning three purple hearts and two bronze stars during his time there however after experiencing several injuries he had been sent back to boston on leave to recover while there he had begun to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and at the urging of his parents his commanding officer had agreed to send him to the specialized facility in pennsylvania the last time corvo's parents had spoken to him he had been hoping to get out of the hospital in time for thanksgiving despite the family's insistence that their son would not have run away military officers assumed otherwise and officially classified him as awol and later a deserter unaware that their son's body had already been discovered just 38 miles away from where he disappeared corvo's family was left to spend the next four decades fighting to clear his name from the disgraceful designation the first major break in the case finally happened in 2009 when investigators from the state missing persons unit and the chester county da's office decided to exhume the body of bulldog john doe from the longwood cemetery a dna profile was then obtained through bone samples and entered into the national missing person's database because it was assumed that the unidentified man was in the military the naval criminal investigation service cold case unit was also brought in to help with the case the investigation eventually tracked down the sister of robert corvo a woman named virginia cleary when they asked her about her brother's tattoo she was sure that they had finally found him a dna sample provided by cleary confirmed the match and in 2012 it was officially announced that robert daniel corvo was the true identity of the bulldog john doe though the revelation was monumental given how much time had passed the news was bittersweet for corvo's family while the mystery of the man's whereabouts had finally been solved there was little chance of receiving the same kind of closure about the unanswered questions surrounding his death among these questions is how corvall was able to escape from the locked hospital where he was being treated or whether he indeed managed to escape at all with some believing he may have been murdered by someone within the hospital sadly a substantial amount of evidence in the case had been lost to time over the decades and tracking down possible witnesses was further complicated by the fact that patients records are sealed this means that it's almost impossible to even establish who might have been in the hospital at the same time as korovo still many have refused to give up on the case believing that the murder of robert corvo will eventually be solved on november 10th 1979 a farmer in caledonia new york made a gruesome discovery in one of his corn fields after noticing a piece of red clothing and suspecting that he had caught a trespassing hunter he went to investigate only to stumble across the body of a young woman she had been shot twice once in the head over her right eye and once in the back when police arrived on the scene they noticed that the pockets of her pants had been turned out as well as those of the distinctive red nylon automotive windbreaker she was wearing that had been spotted by the farmer investigators suspected this had been done by the perpetrator while removing the woman's identification they estimated that she was between 13 and 19 years of age because police could not identify her they referred to the victim as the caledonia jane doe they had no idea that it would take more than 35 years to learn her real name a major issue that police ran into during their investigation was the fact that it had rained heavily prior to the discovery of the young woman's body meaning that vital physical evidence had been washed away this made the chances of finding a potential perpetrator all the more difficult an autopsy revealed that the gun shot to the head had likely caught the victim by surprise as she had not flinched or turned around combined with blood evidence found near the road investigators concluded that the unidentified woman had first been shot outside of the cornfield then dragged in and shot in the back several pieces of evidence suggested that she was not from new york and may have been a hitchhiker she had visible tan lines from a halter top or bathing suit that showed the woman had likely come from a warmer climate and she had a homemade necklace that resembled native american jewelry commonly found in the american southwest she also had a keychain with her that was known to be sold in vending machines along the new york thruway suggesting that she had been traveling further tests conducted on her teeth found a mineral content in composition consistent with the regional drinking water in the southern and southwestern united states making it likely that the victim had at least spent her early years there in addition to this evidence the unidentified woman's stomach contents were analyzed and it was thought that her last meal could have been at a nearby diner in the town of lima witnesses later said they had seen a young woman there accompanied by an older man though police received plenty of tips they ultimately found themselves no closer to identifying the caledonia jane doe or her killer decades passed without any new updates in 2006 new analysis was done on grains of tree pollen found on the doe's clothing when results showed that some of these species were not native to new york investigators were able to strengthen their case that the caledonia jane doe was from out of state more specifically they were able to narrow down her likely place of origin to california arizona or florida owing to pollen from an invasive australian pine that is only found in specific areas of the country with warm climates ultimately the big breaks in the case would come in 2014 when a coincidence pulled the pieces of the puzzle together it started when a woman named laura noel reached out to another woman named pamela dyson on social media dyson was the half-sister of a high school friend that novel had been hoping to reconnect with a woman named tammy jo alexander dyson informed noel that unfortunately she had no idea where her half-sister was and hadn't for several decades tammy had run away from her home in brooksville florida sometime between 1977 and 1979 while she was working as a waitress at a truck stop owned by her mother and stepfather it was assumed that she had left to start a new life away from the turbulence of her mother's drug addiction and violent temper however when dyson reached out to the rest of her family she discovered that no one had heard from tammy since she had left home concerned that something may have happened to her she contacted the hernando county sheriff's department who informed her that no missing persons report existed for her sister though they promptly filed one as the report began to pop up in missing persons databases it eventually caught the eye of a man named carl koppelman koppelman was an artist in california who was involved in the web sluice community and who had sketched a portrait of the caledonia jane doe in 2010 he noticed the striking resemblance between the sketch he'd done and the photo included in the report about tammy joe alexander concluding that they were likely the same person koppelman sent this information to police who then arranged to take a dna sample from dyson to see if she was a familial match to the caledonia jane doe it turned out that koppelman was right and after more than three decades the mystery was finally solved in january of 2015. despite this major revelation police have unfortunately come no closer to identifying tammy alexander's killer in the years since they learned her name though the infamous confession killer henry lee lucas claimed to have murdered tammy while she was still unidentified back in the 1980s this confession was never deemed credible and there was no evidence to support the claim while many hold out hope that the case may one day officially be closed the murder of tammy jo alexander remains unsolved on august 14 1977 the body of a young woman was found by some blackberry pickers off a quiet road in everett washington the woman had been brutally shot several times in the head making her almost unrecognizable her body had been left to decompose in the summer heat adding to law enforcement's struggle to identify her items found with the unknown woman also offered little insight she had no purse or driver's license and carried with her just 17 cents an empty plastic bag and an open pack of cigarettes however in a couple of lucky breaks investigators would eventually succeed in catching her killer a man named david roth had been arrested nearby just days before the discovery of the body after acting erratically and waving a rifle around in the parking lot of a bar though he had been released from jail by the time investigators were informed about the woman's body roth later told a friend about a hitchhiker he had murdered in everett the friend called police and a case was built against roth he was convicted of the unknown woman's murder in november of 1979. despite solving the murder investigators were no closer to establishing the identity of roth's victim when asked he confirmed that she was a hitchhiker but claimed that he had never bothered to get her name he told police he believed the woman was in her 30s owing to wrinkles around her eyes roth picked her up in everett on august 9th 1977 and had propositioned her for sex when she refused he snapped and killed her though the unknown woman remained a nameless victim for decades there were those that refused to let the case be forgotten in 2008 a renewed effort to identify the woman began at the behest of the doane network an international volunteer organization devoted to helping law enforcement solve missing and unidentified persons cases the body of the unknown woman was exhumed and was examined by the state anthropologists with the king county medical examiner's office it was determined that the woman was between 16 and 19 years of age far younger than previously thought this attracted the attention of the national center for missing and exploited children who provided an updated composite sketch of the victim at the same time she was given the nickname precious jane doe by a detective working on the case named jim scharf he felt a personal connection to the case giving her the nickname to remind the public that precious jane doe likely had loved ones and family members who deserved answers even after interest in the case was reignited though big breaks wouldn't come for another few years this finally happened thanks to the work of two key individuals dr barbara ray venter and dr ed green first green was able to successfully develop a technique to extract a complete dna profile from hair without root tissue attached this was not only a major breakthrough in the precious jane doe case where investigators had long failed to obtain usable dna samples but also a major breakthrough in dna technology more broadly for a time the technique was thought to be impossible next venter was able to use the obtained dna profile to search public genealogy websites to begin to establish a family tree she had previously used this technique while helping investigators catch the golden state killer ventor was eventually able to track down several half-siblings of the precious jane doe and discovered her birth name elizabeth and elder however this was not the end of the road for the team of investigators they had long believed that their jane doe had been adopted and would have been known by a different legal surname this was confirmed by interviews with some of the half-siblings who had also been adopted finally in june of 2020 the mystery was solved when the team of genealogists was able to discover the identity of the woman's adoptive parents their jane doe's name was elizabeth ann roberts after the identification more details flooded in elizabeth had gone by the name lisa and had run away from her home in roseburg oregon in the summer of 1977. when lisa's parents last spoke to her they begged her to come home she said that she would think about it her parents sent her a check to a branch of the seahorse first bank in washington but she never picked it up she was just 17 years old at the time of her murder though lisa's story ultimately had a tragic ending investigators were able to provide her family with some amount of closure ensuring that she got her name back after almost 43 years [Music] on november 10 1985 a hunter found a 55-gallon metal barrel near a burnt out an abandoned general store in bear brook state park in allenstown new hampshire inside were the dismembered and skeletonized remains of an adult woman and a young girl wrapped in plastic the haunting discovery prompted an investigation that would ultimately span several decades and would never fully be solved autopsies conducted on the women and young girl revealed that both had died of blunt force trauma to the head it was believed that they had been killed several years earlier despite massive publicity in the u.s and canada generating hundreds of leads neither victim could be identified they were buried in the allenstown cemetery with a tombstone that read here lies the mortal remains known only to god of a woman aged 23 to 33 and a girl child aged 8-10 their slain bodies were found on november 10 1985 in bear brook state park may their souls find peace in god's loving care the case only grew more horrifying when in the year 2000 a second metal barrel was found near the same site containing the remains of two more young girls the first was between two and four years old and the second between one and three it was believed that these victims had been killed at the same time as the other two females and in the exact same way but that the second drum had somehow been missed like with the previous discovery police were at a loss to identify the victims or present a possible killer as the years went by multiple techniques were employed to aid in the identification of the victims who by this time were being referred to as the allenstown four multiple facial reconstructions were done by the national center for missing and exploited children being constantly refined as new information became available in 2014 investigators announced their biggest break in the case yet when dna profiling revealed that the woman and the oldest and youngest girls were maternally related meaning that the oldest victim could be the girl's mother and her sister a year later the link was definitively settled and it was declared that the two girls were the daughters of the oldest victim the girl who was between two and four years old who came to be referred to as the middle child was not related to the other victims it would take several more years of work and a little luck to put the rest of the pieces of the puzzle together in the case exposing a dark and tangled web of depravity in the process when authorities finally got a clear picture of what was going on it all pointed to one man terry peter rasmussen rasmussen earned himself the nickname the chameleon killer for good reason his use of countless aliases meant that his crimes were extremely difficult to track and link together even as he served jail time for serious offenses under the alias bob evans he had dated a woman named denise bowden who disappeared along with her daughter dawn in 1981. though denise was never seen again her daughter re-emerged several years later first when rasmussen was arrested for a drunk driving offense under the name curtis kimball and later when he was living in a trailer park in california under the name gordon jensen both times rasmussen claimed that don bowden was his daughter calling her lisa when he abandoned the young girl in 1985 he was brought up on charges and eventually served time in prison however authorities would not learn of lisa's true identity until much later after his release rasmussen went by the name larry vanner marrying a young chemist named unsun joon sometime in 2001. when onsen's family and friends stopped hearing from her after the marriage they started to get worried and called the police sadly the young woman's body was found in the crawl space of rasmussen's home dismembered and mummified under several pounds of cat litter she had died from blunt force trauma to the head rasmussen was arrested in 2003 and ultimately convicted of unson's murder the police were able to match the larry vanner name to the curtis kimball gordon jensen and bob evans aliases rasmussen had previously used they still had no idea what the real name of their perpetrator was he was tried and sentenced under the name bob evans for the murder of unson june dying in prison in 2010 then beginning in 2016 a flurry of new information started to come out after the re-emergence of lisa who by now knew her real name was don boden police were able to connect the man known as bob evans to the allenstown barrel case furthermore evans was found to be the biological father of the middle child found in the barrel after some more dna searches investigators were able to track down four other biological children linked to the man who were still alive they were finally able to give police the real name of their culprit terry peter rasmussen though police now had a suspect in the case there was still the matter of actually identifying the victims in the allenstown barrel case in 2018 a research librarian named rebecca heath gave investigators a tip that blew the case wide open after becoming obsessed with the allenstown murders heath had meticulously tracked down leads until she came across the disappearance of a mother and her two daughters dating back to 1978. the woman's name was merly's ellen honeychurch and her two daughters were named marie elizabeth vaughn and sara lynne mcwaters the three had last been seen at a thanksgiving dinner with honey church's mother where she had introduced her family to her new boyfriend terry rasmussen in 2019 dna testing confirmed that marlese marie and sarah were three of the identified victims in the allenstown case though much of the investigation has been wrapped up since the identification of rasmussen and three of the four barrel victims there are still many aspects of the case that lack satisfying conclusions for one though rasmussen is considered the most likely culprit he is only officially a suspect and due to his death he can never be appropriately punished for his crimes the disappearance of denise bowden has likewise never officially been solved and her body has never been found finally there's the matter of the fourth barrel victim the girl who was determined to be rasmussen's daughter despite being the first victim to be concretely linked to the killer police are no closer to discovering her identity unfortunately it looks as though for now the haunting remnants of the case will continue to linger on that brings us to the end of our list are there any other john and jane doe cases like this that you'd like us to cover in a future video let us know about them in the comments section below as always if you enjoyed our video don't forget to like and subscribe to crime zone for more true crime content like this making sure to hit the notification bell to stay up to date with our latest videos thank you for watching

Channel: Crime Zone

Views: 1,688,386

Keywords: Crime Zone, True Crime, True Crime Lists, Crime Documentary, Crime Docs, CrimeZone, Canada Crime, US Crime, Canadian Crime, True Crime Documentaries, Unsolved Mysteries, Forensic Files, Crime Stories, Jane Doe Cases, John Doe Cases, Unidentified Person Cases, Bear Brook Murders, Allenstown Four, Lavender Doe, Precious Jane Doe, Bulldog John Doe, Grateful Doe, Caledonia Jane Doe, Tammy Alexander, Lisa Roberts, Terry Rasmussen, Robert Daniel Corriveau

Id: 6BumlzlaWVQ

Length: 29min 34sec (1774 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020