Home » Mind & Soul » Unsolved Crimes » The Forgotten Case of Jane Doe

The Forgotten Case of Jane Doe

© Brenda Gambrell

Often we come upon an unsolved case that touches us beyond others. The police have exhausted all avenues, but we cannot settle for “case closed.” We may identify with the victim – a mother, a missing child, an abused wife. Many of us empathize with their family, as in the case of Amy Bradley, for whom her parents and brother relentlessly continue to search over three years later. Unwilling to settle for another nameless victim of this unsolved case, the webmaster of Families of Unsolved Murders contacted me regarding Jane Doe. In this instance, as in the Boy in the Box, the victim is anonymous. No one came forward to identify her body and she was buried in a grave marked "Jane Doe," another victim of an unsolved crime forgotten by most. Yet she had a life; she had a future that was brutally taken from her and as so many others like her, she deserves to be remembered, not for her death, but for her life.

Her body, clad in only dirty, white socks, two on each foot, was found inside of a discarded refrigerator at a dumping area just outside the entrance to Gray, Kentucky on Monday, April 1, 1985. The coroner determined that she died on either Sunday night or Monday morning of that week and that the cause of death was asphyxiation – the shutting off of oxygen. There were no marks indicating strangulation or that she was smothered, however, scars did reveal that she had given birth at one time. Jane Doe was 4 feet eleven inches tall, between 25 and 32 years old, and weighed approximately 100 pounds. The front section of her hair was auburn, while the back was brunette. She had a small light-colored mole on the front of her neck and a round birthmark above her left ankle. She wore two necklaces – one with a gold eagle and the other with a heart pendant.

A key clue is that the refrigerator - an older model white Admiral bearing a decal on the front door saying "Super Woman." - containing her body had fresh dirt on the handle, indicating that it had not been there for long, for the rain a day earlier most likely would have washed it away. The two men who discovered her body, believed to have visited the dumping site searching for spare parts, unfortunately provided the police with no further clues.

The copyright of the article The Forgotten Case of Jane Doe in Unsolved Crimes is owned by . Permission to republish The Forgotten Case of Jane Doe in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.