The Lost and the Found

http://www.doenetwork.org/media/news137.html

Police Aim to Solve '74 Death

October 8, 2005

The Albuquerque Journal
By Jeremy Pawloski Journal Staff Writer

Santa Fe Police Lt. Gary Johnson will not give up on one of the city's oldest unsolved homicides a strangled "Jane Doe" who was found in 1974 off U.S. 285 near Arroyo Hondo Road.

Johnson said he recently helped get an artist's rendering of the unidentified young woman placed on www.doenetwork.org, a Web site with the motto "There is no time limit to solving a mystery" that tracks Jane Does from all over the world. The artist's drawing was based on the autopsy photos of the teenage girl taken after she was found in Santa Fe in 1974, Johnson said.

The girl's **** body had not decomposed when she was found in December of that year by a Colorado couple who had stopped by the side of the road to pick pi?on nuts, Johnson said.

"I know that this young lady, she's somebody's daughter," Johnson said. "Hopefully, we can get her back home and figure out what happened to her." Santa Fe's Jane Doe is estimated to be in her middle to late teens. She is about 5-feet-2, 110 pounds, with light brown hair and blue/hazel eyes. She was the victim of a sexual assault, according to Johnson.

In addition to getting Santa Fe's 1974 Jane Doe on the Web site, Johnson said he also has been trying to match her with lists of names from databases of missing children that date back to that time. Johnson said that during his investigation, he has noticed the names of missing women from Arizona and Washington whom he is looking at in connection with Santa Fe's Jane Doe.

"Hopefully, by getting her identified, we can identify the circumstances under which she disappeared," Johnson said. "Once you find out who the person is, you can backtrack from that point" and maybe find out who killed her. Johnson also is trying to get a DNA sample found on the Jane Doe's body; possibly from the perpetrator? analyzed and placed into a nationwide DNA database.

Police don't know where Santa Fe's Jane Doe was killed; whether it was in Santa Fe, another part of New Mexico or another state altogether. Johnson said he hopes police can at least put a name to the young woman so that her parents have the closure of knowing what happened to her.

"We're still doing a lot of research on this case," Johnson said. "It's a longshot, but you never know unless you try."

Johnson, 40, is a founding member of Santa Fe's "cold case unit," which investigates all of the city's unsolved homicides, no matter when they happened. In a prior interview, Johnson said all of Santa Fe's cold cases are solvable "if we don't forget about them."

Santa Fe's cold case unit has solved several old homicides in recent years, thanks to the work of detectives and the help of DNA technology, which makes it easier to provide links between human evidence left at crime scenes and potential suspects.

Santa Fe's 1974 Jane Doe homicide has been featured on the www.doenetwork.org Web site since Sept. 16. If anyone has any information on the woman's identity, they can contact the Santa Fe Police Department at 955-5038.