Author Topic: SPOKANE JANE DOE aka MILLIE: WF, 16-30, found in Spokane, WA - 20 June 1984  (Read 401 times)

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The victim's ****, dismembered partial remains were located on the south bank of the Spokane River, .08 mile west of the T.J. Meenach Bridge. Her head had been removed. Her arms were dismembered at the midpoint of both wrists and the legs at the mid calf level. Her hands and feet were never recovered.

Years later, on April 19, 1998, a skull was found on a vacant lot at 7th Avenue and Sherman Street in Spokane. The skull was determined through DNA and tool markings, to belong to the victim.

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https://identifyus.org/en/cases/489

Case Information

Status Unidentified
Case number 84-0002
Date found June 20, 1984 00:00
Date created June 30, 2007 00:00
Date last modified December 16, 2016 09:08
Investigating agency
date QA reviewed

Local Contact (ME/C or Other)

Agency Spokane Cnty Med Exam Ofc
Phone 509-477-2296
Case Manager
Name Elizabeth Nelson
Phone 509-477-2296

Exclusions
The following people have been ruled out as being this decedent:
First Name Last Name Year of Birth State LKA
Mary Ann Bagenstose 1958 Pennsylvania
Andria Bailey 1963 Washington
Carol Donn 1963 Florida
Carol Edwards 1955 Washington
Carol Edwards 1955 Washington
single severed hand found in Spokane County o 1900 Washington
Sharon Giusti 1943 Washington
Kathryn Gregory 1957 Washington
Joan Hall 1966 Oregon
Wendy Huggy 1965 Florida
Marcia Joyce 1950 Washington
Marcia Joyce 1950 Washington
Julia Kanol (Cannell) 1947 Washington
Julia Kanol (Cannell) 1947 Washington
Kase Lee 1966 Washington
Kelly McGinniss 1965 Washington
Helen Morgan 1957 Georgia
Elaine Robertson 1955 Washington
Darlene Tucker 1966
Verla Winter 1939 Washington

Akoya

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https://identifyus.org/en/cases/489

NamUs UP # 489

ME/C Case Number: 84-0002
Spokane County, Washington
16 to 30 year old White Female
Case Report - NamUs UP # 489
Case Information
Status Unidentified
Case number 84-0002
Date found June 20, 1984 00:00
Date created June 30, 2007 00:00
Date last modified December 16, 2016 09:08
Investigating agency
date QA reviewed

Local Contact (ME/C or Other)
Agency Spokane Cnty Med Exam Ofc
Phone 509-477-2296
Case Manager
Name Elizabeth Nelson
Phone 509-477-2296

Demographics
Estimated age Adult - Pre 30
Minimum age 16 years
Maximum age 30 years
Race White
Ethnicity
Sex Female
Weight (pounds) 130, Estimated
Height (inches) 67, Estimated
Body Parts Inventory (Check all that apply)
One or more limbs not recovered
One or both hands not recovered
Body conditions
Not recognizable - Partial remains with soft tissues
Probable year of death 1984 to 1984
Estimated postmortem interval 1 Days

Circumstances
Location Found
GPS coordinates
Address 1 .8 miles west of the T.J. Menach Bridge on the South side bank of the Spokane River
Address 2
City Spokane
State Washington
Zip code
County Spokane
Circumstances
Body found **** along south shore of the Spokane River. Body ****. The head had been removed and was not recovered at that time. The arms were dismembered at the midpoint of both wrists as were the legs at the midcalf level. The hands and feet were never recovered. The skull was later found and matched by to this torso by DNA as well as tool markings. The skull was found on 4-19-1998 in a vacant lot loacted at 7th and Sherman Avenues in the city of Spokane Washington. Some dental information was recovered at that time. The Anthropologist has estimated the age to be between 18 and 24. There was evidence at autopsy that this woman had bore at least one child in her life time. This case is classified as a homicide.
A single hand was discovered on 7/18/84in Spokane County. This hand has been excluded by mitochondrial DNA comparioson as a match to this case.

Physical

Hair color Unknown or Completely Bald
Head hair
none present
Body hair
blonde appearing
Facial hair
none present
Left eye color Unknown or Missing
Right eye color Unknown or Missing

Scars and marks
on left patella t a 1 and 1/2 inch oval horizontal scar. there were multiple striae over the lower abdomen and breasts. An oblique scar on the left arm 3 and 1/2 inch in legth. Two Nevi (moles) one measuring 4 mm and located at the front of the neck

Skeletal findings
The radiologist noted that therre is a spina bifida occulta in the sacrum at the S1 segment. There are unfused apophyses of the transverse process of the 5th lumbar vertebra bilaterally. There is a failry prominent anterior -superior iliac spines on both

No clothing or accessories

Dental

Status: Dental information / charting is available and entered

DNA
Status: Sample submitted - Tests complete

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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/feb/05/spokane-county-has-identified-one-missing-person-u/

Spokane County has identified one missing person using amateur sleuth’s help

Sun., Feb. 5, 2017, 5:05 a.m.



This is Carl Koppelman’s rendering of an unidentified woman known as “Millie,” whose body was found in the Spokane River in 1984.

By Chad Sokolchadso@spokesman.com

When Donald Nyden’s body turned up in the Spokane River last summer, it didn’t take long to figure out who he was.

That’s largely because the medical examiner’s office asked for help from an unlikely source: Carl Koppelman, a former accountant from Southern California who’s something of a guru in the art of drawing the dead.

Nyden was 68 when someone found his body caught in some waterlogged branches near Browne’s Addition on June 4. He’d been a drifter, apparently spending time at homeless camps along the river.

Authorities thought he had been in the water for several days. They didn’t know his name.

The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office sent Koppelman a few photos of the autopsy. A day later he returned a portrait, having restored a sense of life to Nyden’s features – from the wrinkles under his eyes to the texture of his beard.

It was an image fit for publication by the local media.

“We got a phone call right away saying, ‘That’s our guy,’” said Elizabeth Nelson, an investigator from the medical examiner’s office.

A case manager from a local homeless shelter had recognized Nyden. From there, investigators used Veterans Affairs records to track down his brother, who lives in Virginia.

Nelson and Koppelman have worked together for about two years. They think they’re close to solving another case out of Spokane County.

The Millie case

It started on June 20, 1984, when two young men fishing near the T.J. Meenach Bridge found the naked body of a young woman in the river.

She had been dismembered, apparently with an ax, a hatchet or a knife.

“No head, no hands, no feet,” Nelson said.

Investigators figured she was from out of town because she didn’t match any local missing persons reports, and there hadn’t been any similar murders around that time.

The killer, who probably knew her well, had taken extreme measures to prevent her from being identified.

Tips have trickled in and dozens of people have been interviewed, but answers have eluded investigators for 33 years.

“It was a very unusual case, just a lot of aspects to it,” said Don Giese, a former Spokane police detective who worked on the investigation.

The coroner determined the woman was 20 to 35 years old and about 5 feet 7 inches tall, and that she’d had at least one baby. She had blonde body hair, a few scars on her legs and left arm, and two moles on the front of her neck.

The coroner thought she had been in the water for less than 48 hours, but later analysis suggested it could have been weeks because bodies decompose slowly in cold water.

About a month after the body was found, a neighborhood dog brought home the woman’s decomposing hand.

It was sent to an FBI lab in Washington, D.C. for fingerprinting. But Giese said the hand was somehow misplaced and police got back evidence from an unrelated case.

“Nothing ever came of that,” he said.

The investigation lulled until April 19, 1998, when a woman spotted a human skull while walking her dog on the lower South Hill. It had two vertrebrae still attached.

The lot, at the corner of Sherman Street and Seventh Avenue, had been a neighborhood dumping site for years. An excavation turned up no other remains or evidence.

DNA has since confirmed the skull matches the body, which is interred at Fairmount cemetery.

Giese said the investigation “really took off” off with the discovery of the skull.

Shortly after the skull was found, Giese took it to a forensic anthropologist in Western Washington. He brought his daughter, a fifth-grader at the time, with him.

Along the way they stayed at a motel, and while watching TV his daughter said, “Actually there’s three people in the room, so we ought to name her.”

So the woman from the river became “Millie” – a name that stuck throughout Giese’s tenure with the police department.

He retired in 2009 after 30 years on the force, hoping someone else would figure out Millie’s real name.

“It was one of those cases that I really wanted to solve but never was able to,” he said recently.

An unlikely break
In January 2015, Koppelman received a tip on Facebook, one of several websites he utilizes as an amateur sleuth. He learned that a woman from Blythe, California, had gone missing around 1980.

Relatives give varying accounts of her disappearance, but each version involves outlaw bikers and a bar or restaurant in neighboring Ehrenberg, Arizona.

It appears that no one reported her missing at the time, possibly because family members thought she had run away.

“We still don’t have confirmation that she is that person,” Koppelman said, “but if not, there are a lot of similarities.”

He had created a portrait based on images of the skull from the vacant lot on the South Hill. That portrait bears an unmistakable resemblance to an old yearbook photo of the missing woman.

They have the same gapped teeth and pointed nose, the same prominent chin and underbite, the same two moles on the front of the neck. The missing woman had blonde hair and would have been about the right age.

She also had one son, who was an infant when she disappeared.

The son is now in an Alabama prison. He and a sister of the missing woman both have given DNA samples, but the results haven’t come back yet.

“We’re crossing our fingers,” said Nelson, the investigator from the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office.

But this could be another false alarm.

“Sometimes a ‘no’ is just as good as a ‘yes’ because that means we can move on and keep looking,” Nelson said.

‘A lot of sad families’
There are 25 active investigations involving unidentified remains in Spokane County. Many of them were pulled from the river. The oldest cases date back to 1961.

It’s Nelson’s job to find names for the dead – and notify any living relatives.

“I don’t know what else would be as fulfilling,” she said. “There’s a lot of sad families out there waiting to hear this news.”

One case is especially personal for Nelson.

Before becoming a forensic investigator, she was an emergency medical technician and volunteer diver for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. In June 2007, she helped recover a man’s body from the river just east of the Washington Street Bridge.

The man was badly decomposed, making fingerprints unobtainable. There was only one tooth left in his mouth. There were no tattoos on the remnants of his skin. He had multiple facial fractures and two titanium plates on his jaw from a previous surgery.

Forensic experts think he was about 40 years old, 5 feet 3 inches to 5 feet 6 inches tall, and between 130 to 180 pounds. He appears to be of mixed race.

Koppelman drew a portrait of the man. It was uploaded into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, along with thousands of other cases.

“Our unidentified and missing people are a huge, huge problem that no one talks about,” Nelson said.

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http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/296ufwa.html

296UFWA - Unidentified Female












Date of Discovery: DATE
Location of Discovery: LOCATION
Estimated Date of Death: 1-2 days prior
State of Remains: Not recognizable - partial remains with soft tissues
Cause of Death: Homicide by stabbing

Physical Description
Estimated Age: 16-35 years old
Race: White
Gender: Female
Height: 5'3" to 5'7"
Weight: 130 lbs.
Hair Color: Posibly blond
Eye Color: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Relatively thin. Had bore at least one child. She had a 1 1/2-inch oval horizontal scar on her left knee cap, a faint 1/4-inch scar on her right knee cap, and an oblique scar of her left arm that measured 3 1/2-inches in length. There were 2 prominent moles noted on the front of her neck, one measuring 4 mm. She had stretch marks on her abdomen and breasts. The radiologist noted that there is a spina bifida occulta in the sacrum at the S1 segment. There are unfused apophyses of the transverse process of the 5th lumbar vertebra bilaterally. There is a fairly prominent anterior-superior iliac spines on both.

Identifiers
Dentals: Available. Tooth #23 rotated. Tooth #11 mesial caries. Diastema between upper front teeth.
Fingerprints: Not available
DNA: Sample submitted - Tests complete

Clothing & Personal Items
Clothing: None.
Jewelry: None.
Additional Personal Items: None.

Circumstances of Discovery
The victim's ****, dismembered partial remains were located on the south bank of the Spokane River, .08 mile west of the T.J. Meenach Bridge. Her head had been removed. Her arms were dismembered at the midpoint of both wrists and the legs at the mid calf level. Her hands and feet were never recovered.

A sing hand was recovered on July 18, 1984, but tests proved it was not hers through mtDNA comparison.

Years later, on April 19, 1998, a skull was found on a vacant lot at 7th Avenue and Sherman Street in Spokane. The skull was determined through DNA and tool markings, to belong to the victim.

Investigating Agency(s)
Agency Name: A Spokane County Sheriff's Office
Agency Contact Person: Detective Don Giese
Agency Phone Number: 509-625-4219
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: 98-103320

Agency Name: Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office
Agency Contact Person: N/A
Agency Phone Number: 509-477-2296
Agency E-Mail: medexam@spokanecounty.org
Agency Case Number: 84-179 and 84-0002

NCIC Case Number: Not entered
NamUs Case Number: 489

Information Source(s)
NamUs
Hellbeasts - A Blog About Crime and Injustice
Spokane Medical Examiner's Office
Wikipedia
Seattle Post-Intelligencer News Archive
Spokeman Review News Archive

Admin Notes
Added: Prior to 2011; Last Updated: 10/16/2016

Akoya

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http://unidentified.wikia.com/wiki/Millie

"Millie" is the nickname given to a woman, by law enforcement, found dismembered in 1984 in Washington. Her skull was not found until 1998.

In early 2015 a woman missing from Blythe, California, came up as a possible identify for the victim. Subject's identity or name hasn't been released, yet DNA comparison is pending

Millie
Sex Female
Race White
Location Spokane, Washington
Found June 20, 1984 (body)
April 19, 1998 (skull)

Unidentified for 32 years
Postmortem interval 1 - 2 days
Body condition Traumatic injuries/Skeletal
Age approximation 16 - 30
Height approximation 5'3 - 5'7
Weight approximation 130 pounds
Cause of death Beating, stabbing
This case contains graphic content that may not be suitable for all readers.

"Millie" is the nickname given to a woman, by law enforcement, found dismembered in 1984 in Washington. Her skull was not found until 1998.

In early 2015 a woman missing from Blythe, California, came up as a possible identify for the victim. Subject's identity or name hasn't been released, yet DNA comparison is pending.

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/534098837042777515/



1984 Spokane Jane Doe Recon 009 - List of unidentified murder victims in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaBy CarlK90245 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35549463

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https://hellbeasts.com/spokane-county-jane-doe/

February 19, 2014 Murder, New Articles 4 Comments

Spokane County Jane Doe



Unsolved Murder

On June 20, 1984, a woman’s remains were found on the south side bank of the Spokane River. It was a young woman who had been murdered. She has yet to be identified.

Authorities in Spokane, Washington initially figured the woman was between 16 and 30 years of age, but a 1998 forensic report pegged her age as 25 to 35.

The woman was white and probably blonde, maybe around 130 pounds and 5-and-a-half feet tall. On her left kneecap she had a 1-and-a-half inch oval scar. On her left arm she had a 3-and-a-half inch scar. She also had two moles on the front of her neck.

This unfortunate woman had a spina bifida occulta, which is a mild and probably asymptomatic form of spina bifida which would have shown no hernial protrusion of the spinal cord. It doesn’t sound to me like it had any impact upon her lifestyle — she wasn’t paralyzed or disabled because of it.

[​IMG]The 1998 forensic report indicates that the woman had been murdered. She had suffered a blunt force trauma that fractured her mid face and bottom jaw. This could have been the result of one single blow that caused her face to smack into a hard surface.

The woman also suffered sharp force trauma on the right side of her head and neck. Those injuries would have resulted from chop-type blows from her assailant.

Additionally the poor woman suffered sharp force trauma that severed the bones of her neck.

All of these injuries were inflicted at the time of death. Sounds to me like someone went postal on the poor woman. Whoever the killer was, he/she was lucky. Identifying the murderer is infinitely more difficult if the victim remains unidentified.

[​IMG]The victim’s remains were left almost a mile west of the T.J. Menach Bridge on the Spokane River. There were no items of clothing or jewelry with her.

The police have tried to put a face to the Jane Doe, and I’m not particularly satisfied with their efforts. The first sketch has a tiny bottom jaw, whereas the actual mandible is quite prominent and broad. This face does not fit the skull.

The second sketch is a big improvement. The face does fit the skull much better. I’m not sure why the artist made the eyebrows so heavy or the lips so puffy — it’s all guesswork anyway. I think the sketch makes the woman look much older than she was. The artist gives a suggestion of a gap between the front teeth. Possibly that is correct, but since the skull is missing the front teeth I can’t say for sure.

The 3-D reconstruction doesn’t look particularly realistic. I think the chin is too long and pointy, as is the nose. That is, of course, my opinion.

[​IMG]I took it upon myself to create a face for Jane Doe 489. I gave her blonde hair but didn’t get carried away with a hairstyle. For all I know she had long hair. I didn’t put the 2 moles on her neck because the report didn’t specify their exact location.

I hope this poor woman is finally claimed by her loved ones. It’s been 30 years, much too long for her to be away from family and friends.

If anyone has any idea who this Jane Doe is please contact the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office 509-477-2296. The case manager listed is Elizabeth Nelson. Please refer to ME/C Case Number: 84-0002, or NamUS UP #489.

If anyone has any idea who her killer is, please contact the police in Spokane County.

And, as promised, here is my version of the unidentified woman.


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Years later, on April 19, 1998, a skull was found on a vacant lot at 7th Avenue and Sherman Street in Spokane. The skull was determined through DNA and tool markings, to belong to the victim.



E 7th Ave & S Sherman St, Spokane, WA 99202

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Spokane, Washington






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The victim's ****, dismembered partial remains were located on the south bank of the Spokane River, .08 mile west of the T.J. Meenach Bridge. Her head had been removed. Her arms were dismembered at the midpoint of both wrists and the legs at the mid calf level. Her hands and feet were never recovered.



N T J Meenach Dr, Spokane, WA 99205