The Lost and the Found

Children discovered her body in September of 1995, at the rear of the 24-hour Clubhouse Diner on Street Road in Bensalem. They were searching for wood and sticks to build a tree fort. She was wrapped in a plastic tarp, stripped of her clothing and hidden beneath dirt, leaves, and trash. The woman was likely the victim of strangulation, although no official cause of death is known, according to Bensalem Detective Chris McMullin.

https://identifyus.org/en/cases/2201

Local Contact (ME/C or Other)
Agency Bucks Cnty Coroners Ofc
Phone 267-880-5040
Case Manager
Name Christopher McMullin
Phone 215.633.3726

Exclusions
The following people have been ruled out as being this decedent:
First Name Last Name Year of Birth State LKA
Andrea Coyle 1948 Pennsylvania
Katherine Heckel 1951 Pennsylvania
Frances Kiefer 1949 Pennsylvania
Gloria Korzon 1943 Pennsylvania
Bonita Krummel 1946 New Jersey
CHARLOTTEAL POLLIS 1965 Ohio
Barbara Shumac 1953 Pennsylvania
Barbara Shumac 1953 Pennsylvania
Betty Smith 1942 New Jersey
Mary Smith* 1948 Pennsylvania
Colleen Voitik Mc Hugh 1963 Illinois

http://pennsylvaniamissing.com/unidentified/uids1990to1999.html

Bucks County - September 18, 1995



Bensalem Jane Doe

Victim's Vital Statistics:
White Female
Est. Age: 35 -45 yrs old
Est. Height: 4'8" - 5'2"
Est. Weight: unknown
Hair Color: dark brown
Eye color: unknown
Skeletal remains

Location: Bensalem
Contact: Bensalem Police Dept
Det. Chris McMullin
Phone # : 215-633-3700

http://www.officialcoldcaseinvestigations.com/showthread.php?14661-Jane-Doe-Bensalem-1995

Jane Doe, Bensalem, 1995

Artists reintroduce "Jane Doe' to public
An unidentified woman whose remains were unearthed behind a popular diner nearly a decade ago showed her face again in Bensalem yesterday.
Bensalem police and Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons presented a reconstructed version of the woman's countenance at the Bensalem Municipal Building on Byberry Road in hopes of raising public awareness and bolstering police efforts to solve the still-open homicide case.
Described as a 35- to 45-year-old Caucasian with olive skin, "Jane Doe" has a hard-set jaw, jutting chin and wide, chocolate-brown eyes. Although her specific hairstyle is unknown, Jane's recreation sports straight dark-brown hair that is parted down the middle of her forehead and falls in wisps and clumps to the small of her back. Before her death, which Gibbons said occurred in late 1993 or early 1994, she stood between 4 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 3 inches tall.
Children first discovered her body in September 1995 at the rear of the 24-hour Clubhouse Diner on Street Road in Bensalem while searching for wood and sticks to build a tree fort. Wrapped in a plastic tarp, stripped of her clothing and hidden beneath dirt, leaves and trash, the woman was likely the victim of strangulation, although no official cause of death is known, according to Bensalem Detective Chris McMullin.
The homicide was once believed to have been linked to the early 1990s murders of Amy Moore and go-go dancer Toshiko Ciaccio. Ciaccio, specifically, was found wrapped in plastic similar to Jane Doe.
While the timing fits, Gibbons said, no explicit evidence ever linked those deaths and this victim and, for many years, the body and investigation were laid to rest and all but forgotten.
"This case was cold [unsolved]," McMullin said. "Part of it was that back in 1995, when this happened, the Internet and Web sites weren't as common as they are now."
McMullin finally turned to the Web for help in February 2002, placing the details of his ongoing investigation on a site run by The Doe Network, an international agency devoted to identifying missing persons and solving cold homicide cases.
Soon after, organization director Nancy Monahan contacted McMullin about the possibility of using information garnered from the remains to create an accurate picture of what she looked like while she was alive - via a detailed pencil sketch and three-dimensional sculpture.
Authorities exhumed Jane Doe's body in early May from a vault in Telford's Trinity Cemetery.
Forensic sculptors and artists Dan Solitti and Seth Wolfson then went to work, poring over hair samples, dental records and the coroner's autopsy report to recreate Jane's facial features, down to her slight overbite, stress wrinkles beneath her eyes and the triangular cleft in the center of her chin.
"It's never meant to be an exact portrait of the person," said Solitti, who is also a police officer in Jersey City, N.J. "But the relationship of features to one another can be close enough that someone who is familiar with the person could identify her."
A possible identification from a friend or family member can then be confirmed using nuclear DNA acquired from the limbs or other body cavities, said Assistant District Attorney Robin Campbell.
At the time the body was discovered, police also found a chain and crucifix depicting the Stations of the Cross, along with several articles of clothing, including a quilted sleeveless vest, light blue corduroy pants and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Property of Alcatraz Penitentiary Swim Team."
Anyone with information related to Jane is urged to contact Bensalem police at 215-633-3719. To learn more about The Doe Network, visit doenetwork.org.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/crim...5249479b8.html

https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/story/news/2021/12/20/warminster-bensalem-bucks-county-merrybeth-hodgkinson-cold-case-doylestown-murder-mcmullin/8941926002/

Warminster woman missing since 1992 identified as Bensalem murder victim found behind diner 26 years ago

Nearly 30 years after she disappeared, the woman whose body was found wrapped in plastic and buried in a shallow grave behind a popular 24-hour diner has a name again.

Now Bensalem police want to find out who killed Merrybeth Hodgkinson, a 31-year-old single mother of two who grew up in Bucks County and once danced at Lower Bucks strip clubs. 

The Bensalem detective overseeing the case has identified a person of interest who is already serving life in prison.
This 1979 high school yearbook photo shows Merrybeth Hodgkinson, who Bensalem police believe was murdered and dumped behind a diner sometime in 1992.

The mystery surrounding the woman known as Clubhouse Jane Doe was solved last month after her DNA profile was uploaded into an international database to build a genetic family tree.

Earlier this month, a DNA match with a living sibling confirmed the remains are Hodgkinson, who was last seen alive in 1992, Bensalem police said in a press release Monday announcing authorities had identified Hodgkinson.  More information will be released Tuesday at a news conference at the Bensalem headquarters.

It was the second time in less than a year that Bensalem Detective Chris McMullin and the department successfully used genetic matching technology for a Jane Doe case.

Children playing in a wooded area near the Clubhouse Diner off Street Road near Knights Road found the remains on Sept. 18, 1995.

The decomposed body of a naked woman was inside clear, heavy-gauge plastic wrap. Several pieces of clothing, two crucifixes and a wood beaded massage cushion were found buried nearby. No identification was found.
Two shirts found near the body of a woman police have identified as Merrybeth Hodgkinson. She was found wrapped in plastic and largely decomposed in 1995
Two crucifix found near the body of now identified as Merrybeth Hodgkinson in 1995.

Forensic experts estimated Jane Doe had been dead two to three years, according to police reports at the time.

She was described as white with olive skin, probably between 35 and 45 years old, and petite. Her jaw was square and she had wide set brown eyes. 

An autopsy determined the cause of death was strangulation. The manner of death was ruled a homicide.

The body did not fit the description of any reported missing persons in the area at the time and the investigation quickly went cold. 

The Bucks County Coroner’s Office quietly buried the remains in a plot at Trinity Cemetery in Telford. A marker listed the date she was found and the name “Unknown Jane Doe.”

The case file gathered dust until it caught the eye of McMullin in 2002, when he reopened a handful of cold cases in the department. He was a Bensalem patrolman in 1995 when the Clubhouse Diner body was found.