The Lost and the Found

http://krqe.com/2014/12/03/new-details-emerge-in-40-year-old-cold-case/

New details emerge in 40-year-old cold case
Published: December 3, 2014, 10:42 pm



SANTA FE (KRQE) – It has been a mystery for 40 years, a teen girl dumped on the side of the road and no one knew who she was. Detectives were close to identifying her until they hit a new road block. They cannot find her body.

On Dec. 2, 1974, a Colorado couple stopped off the side of highway 285 just south of Arroyo Hondo Road in Santa Fe looking for pine nuts.

Instead, they found something very disturbing.

A Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department report said they “came across a figure, which appeared to them to be that of a mannequin.” An officer confirmed it was the naked body of a teenage girl.

An autopsy showed, she had been strangled, but no one knew who she was, where she came from, let alone who killed her, until about a year ago.

That is when the Doe Network, a volunteer organization that helps solve cold cases, reached out to Santa Fe Police.

“They said, ‘This missing person really fits your Jane Doe. Would you guys look into it?’” said Celina Espinoza with the Santa Fe Police Department.

The tip linked them to a woman 1,500 miles away in Michigan, who said her 19-year-old sister was going to her boyfriend’s house in 1974 and she never saw her again.

The teen was found only with a ring and small gold wire earrings, jewelry, police said, the sister in Michigan recognized.

She also confirmed it looking at pictures, but detectives cannot confirm it with DNA because they said she has gone missing again.

“She was put in an indigent grave we believe in Glorieta, but there was a fire and the Office of the Medical Investigator’s warehouse and all the records burned in that fire,” Espinoza said.

Police would not say who they think the woman is because it is not confirmed through DNA.

At this point, they are relying on tips to find where the woman was buried.