Various Articles, Beth Doe

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
December 24, 2006
Edition: FIVE STAR
Section: STATE
Page: B-8



Topics:
Index Terms:
MURDER




AFTER 30 YEARS, MURDER VICTIM STILL UNIDENTIFIED
POLICE IN POCONOS SAY CASE OF WOMAN, HER FULL-TERM FETUS 'COLD AS COLD CAN BE'
Author: Michael Rubinkam, The Associated Press

Dateline: WHITE HAVEN, Pa.









Article Text:
On Dec. 20, 1976, a teenager walking along the banks of the Lehigh River outside this Luzerne County town in the Pocono Mountains made a gruesome discovery: the dismembered remains of a young woman and her full-term fetus.
Thirty years later, police are no closer to finding the woman's killer, primarily because they are still missing a crucial bit of information.
Her name.
Try as they might, authorities haven't come close to making an identification. And their prospects dim a little more with each passing year.
"It's as cold as cold can be, unfortunately," said Cpl. Thomas McAndrew, a state police detective who took over the case a year ago. "The killer's never been caught, and never will be until we find out who she is."
The woman was strangled, shot, dismembered and stuffed into three suitcases that were flung over a bridge along Interstate 80.
The killer was probably aiming for the Lehigh River, 300 feet below, but missed. Two of the suitcases broke open on impact, spilling the victim's head and torso and her female fetus. The third suitcase contained the woman's arms and legs. Her nose and ears had been cut off.
The coroner estimated she had been dead less than 24 hours.
The crime scene yielded a wealth of evidence, but little of it was useful. In addition to her remains, investigators had the suitcases, all of them the same size and missing their handles. Some body parts were wrapped in a rust-colored chenille bedspread; six soggy sections of the New York Sunday News covered her torso.
A series of letters and numbers, written in ink on the palm of her left hand, provided a tantalizing clue. But a police check of license plates and CB call signs turned up nothing.
"She haunts me, she really does," said Nancy Monahan, the Pennsylvania director of the Doe Network, a group of amateur sleuths that seeks to attach names to unidentified bodies. "I've had dreams about her."
Dreams, and questions, such as: How could a young woman, about to give birth, have simply vanished days or weeks before Christmas and no one reported her missing?
Was she someone on the margins of society -- an illegal immigrant, perhaps?
Was her own family covering up for the killer, and that's why no one came forward?
And what about that writing on her hand?
At the White Haven Police Department, where an artist's conception of what the victim looked like hangs on a wall, Patrolman Thomas Szoke has his own theories about the case.
"My feeling is she is probably a runaway from another state and her family doesn't know what happened to her," he said. "Or she may have been a throwaway, where the parent says, 'You're 15, get out.' "
The victim's family might have even filed a missing persons report, Patrolman Szoke said, but such a report, if it exists, would likely be collecting dust in a police department file cabinet somewhere.
Cpl. McAndrew said he would like to exhume the body to gather DNA samples, but the process is time-consuming and expensive. And while DNA samples can be run through FBI and missing persons databases, a match would be a long shot, given the time elapsed.
"DNA testing can be used in unidentified body cases, but it is not an important tool at this time because the number of people whose DNA is on record anywhere represents a very, very small percentage of the population," state police spokesman Jack Lewis said via e-mail.
The victim had previous dental work, and her fetus was healthy at the time of death, indicating the woman took care of herself and her unborn daughter.
For Cpl. McAndrew, learning her identity would be a small way to give her some dignity.
"It's amazing that no one has identified her, that somebody out there isn't missing her," he said.
The victim and her fetus are buried in a paupers cemetery several miles from where the remains were found. The tomb is marked with a simple white cross and a small granite marker that says, "Beth Doe."
Which, unless there is a miraculous break in the case, is how history will remember her.

Caption:
PHOTO: (For Two Photos) Two artist's conceptions of murder victim, dubbed Beth Doe.
PHOTO (2)

[Starless]

Standard-Speaker (Hazleton, PA)
December 28, 2006
Section: Front Page








30 years later, pregnant murder victim still without a name

Author: MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press Writer











Article Text:
WHITE HAVEN — On Dec. 20, 1976, a teenager walking along the banks of the Lehigh River outside the borough made a gruesome discovery: the dismembered remains of a young woman and her full-term fetus.

Thirty years later, police are no closer to finding her killer, primarily because they are still missing a crucial bit of information.
Her name.
Try as they might, authorities haven’t come close to making an identification. And their prospects dim a little more with each passing year.
“It’s as cold as cold can be, unfortunately,” said Cpl. Thomas McAndrew, a state police detective who took over the case a year ago. “The killer’s never been caught, and never will be until we find out who she is.”
The woman was strangled, shot, dismembered and stuffed into three suitcases that were flung over a bridge along Interstate 80.
The killer was probably aiming for the Lehigh River, 300 feet below, but missed. Two of the suitcases broke open on impact, spilling the victim’s head and torso and her female fetus. The third suitcase contained the woman’s arms and legs. Her nose and ears had been cut off.
The coroner estimated she had been dead less than 24 hours.
The crime scene yielded a wealth of evidence, but little of it was useful. In addition to her remains, investigators had the suitcases, all of them the same size and missing their handles. Some body parts were wrapped in a rust-colored chenille bedspread; six soggy sections of the New York Sunday News covered her torso.
A series of letters and numbers, written in ink on the palm of her left hand, provided a tantalizing clue. But a police check of license plates and CB call signs turned up nothing.
“She haunts me, she really does,” said Nancy Monahan, the Pennsylvania director of the Doe Network, a group of amateur sleuths that seeks to attach names to unidentified bodies. “I’ve had dreams about her.”
Dreams, and questions, such as: How could a young woman, about to give birth, have simply vanished days or weeks before Christmas and no one reported her missing?
Was she someone on the margins of society — an illegal immigrant, perhaps?
Was her own family covering up for the killer, and that’s why no one came forward?
And what about that writing on her hand?
At the White Haven Police Department, where an artist’s conception of what the victim looked like hangs on a wall, Patrolman Thomas Szoke has his own theories about the case.
“My feeling is she is probably a runaway from another state and her family doesn’t know what happened to her,” he said. “Or she may have been a throwaway, where the parent says, ‘You’re 15, get out.”’
The victim’s family might have even filed a missing persons report, Szoke said, but such a report, if it exists, would likely be collecting dust in a police department file cabinet somewhere.
McAndrew said he would like to exhume the body to gather DNA samples, but the process is time-consuming and expensive. And while DNA samples can be run through FBI and missing persons databases, a match would be a long shot, given the time elapsed.
“DNA testing can be used in unidentified body cases, but it is not an important tool at this time because the number of people whose DNA is on record anywhere represents a very, very small percentage of the population,” state police spokesman Jack Lewis said via e-mail.
The victim had previous dental work, and her fetus was healthy at the time of death, indicating the woman took care of herself and her unborn daughter.
For McAndrew, learning her identity would be a small way to give her some dignity.
“It’s amazing that no one has identified her, that somebody out there isn’t missing her,” he said.
The victim and her fetus are buried in a paupers cemetery several miles from where the remains were found. The tomb is marked with a simple white cross and a small granite marker that says, “Beth Doe.”
Which, unless there is a miraculous break in the case, is how history will remember her.
On the Net:

[Starless]

Standard-Speaker (Hazleton, PA)
November 2, 2007
Section: News








Tiny strands that make each person unique might supply the most information to authorities who unearthed a murder victim, 31 years after she was buried anonymously, a famous coroner said

Author: KENT JACKSON
Staff Writer











Article Text:
Tiny strands that make each person unique might supply the most information to authorities who unearthed a murder victim on Tuesday, 31 years after she was buried anonymously, a famous coroner said.

“So I put my money on DNA,” Dr. Cyril Wecht said when asked why state police would exhume the remains of a pregnant woman referred to as Beth Doe.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid that carries hereditary material, was discovered in 1953 but not used in police investigations until 1980 in Great Britain and 1984 in the United States, Wecht said.
Wecht, the former Allegheny County medical examiner who has weighed in on cases from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the death of JonBenet Ramsey, said DNA might help determine Beth Doe’s real name, which would be a big step in the case.
“Obviously you go back and trace to see where she might be from. Who knows, you might find a boyfriend (or) husband, and that could lead you to a reasonable suspect,” he said. “... That could lead in retroactive fashion to people who knew her and who she was last with.”
The woman had been strangled, shot, dismembered and put into two suitcases thrown off an Interstate 80 bridge to the bank of the Lehigh River in Lehigh Township, Carbon County, on Dec. 20, 1976. Authorities estimated she had been dead 24 hours or less.
Wecht thinks it is more likely that she went with someone she knew — perhaps on a holiday trip — rather than thumbed a ride with a stranger.
Because Beth Doe was pregnant, the DNA of her fetus, which was full term when found in a third suitcase, also could identify the father.
“The fetus is the chromosomal pattern of both father and mother. If they get some leads, they may not be able to definitively say it’s him, but they’ll be able to exclude somebody who could not have been the father,” Wecht said.
He doubts that investigators will recover traces of the killer’s DNA from her remains because most soft tissue will have disappeared or dried.
Authorities said they reopened the grave to take advantage of the advances in forensic science. They also can attempt to match her DNA with samples in registries of missing persons.
Scott Davis, a professor in the forensic science program at Mansfield University, said DNA also contains markers that would show whether Beth Doe suffered from any hereditary diseases or syndromes.
Even in 31-year-old remains, researchers can find DNA in bone marrow and teeth, Davis said.
After extracting DNA, researchers probably will run a polymerase chain reaction to replicate the strands so they have more material to test.
Tests are time-consuming and costly, in part because of the backlog in which fresh cases usually get preference to cases as old as Beth Doe’s.
“We have enough people, but we really don’t have enough labs,” Davis said.
Police said Beth Doe will be examined at a laboratory in Phillipsburg, N.J.
The teeth and bones also might tell more about the woman, if they have medical and dental records of missing persons for comparison.
At the exhumation, police said they wanted to compare the jaw with pictures and a dental chart made 31 years ago.
Wecht said even 31 years ago if he had handled an unidentified person, he would have removed the jaw before burial.
The skeleton, meanwhile, would still show signs of fractures, and Davis said forensics experts now can identify the serrated tool used on her from the marks left on the bones.
“These are just pieces of a puzzle,” Davis said. “You collect anything new you can.”
 

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Mystery body exhumed: Forensic exams will try to identify woman who was strangled, shot and was nine months pregnant.

The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, PA)

| October 31, 2007

Byline: Jennifer Learn-Andes
Oct. 31--WEATHERLY -- After two hours of careful digging in a rural pauper cemetery near Weatherly on Tuesday, the body of a young unidentified murder victim was pulled from her grave for modern testing and investigation.
The excavation took longer than anticipated because the remains were buried in a handmade wooden box that had started to cave in. Water was also found underground, but police said the remains should be well preserved because they were inside a bag.
Police were awaiting a forensic exam to determine if the full-term fetus was in the bag with her mother.
The body of the woman was discovered along the banks of the Lehigh River around 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 20, 1976. The woman was in her late teens or early 20s and nine months pregnant.
Police determined she was strangled and shot in the back of the neck and had been dead less than 24 hours from the time her body was found.
She was dismembered with a fine, serrated tool and stuffed into three suitcases that were tossed over a westbound Interstate 80 overpass. A cut-up chenille bedspread and sections of the New York Sunday News were used to wrap some parts of the body.
Impact of the 300-foot fall broke open two of the suitcases, scattering the head, torso and fetus. The third suitcase containing the arms and legs remained intact.
A 14-year-old boy who had been playing in that area discovered the woman's head, which was missing the ears and nose.
Removal of the nose is "very unusual," said Thomas C. McAndrew, a state police corporal at Troop N in Hazleton.
"There's a lot of dismemberment in homicide, but it's very rare to have somebody remove a nose," McAndrew said.
The letters WSR appeared to be written in ink on the woman's left hand along with two numbers.
The woman's remains had been stored at the Philadelphia medical examiner's office until 1983, when they were buried at the Laurytown Road Cemetery in Lehigh Township, Carbon County, McAndrew said.
Police don't have any strong leads but have been interested in taking a fresh look at the evidence for several years, McAndrew said. They have a hunch that the killer had a personal connection to the woman and that the woman was not from the immediate area.
The remains will be examined by a forensic pathologist and experts who specialize in examining teeth and bones, he said.
McAndrew said he wants to obtain DNA samples, hoping to get a hit on a nationwide DNA missing person database. However, he cautioned that the database is still in its "infancy." Investigators will also attempt to obtain DNA samples from the fetus, he said.
The DNA will be also useful because state police sometimes receive calls from people who wonder if the woman is their missing relative, he said. The DNA could be matched to samples from the callers, McAndrew said.
McAndrew expects to release a new drawing of the woman within a week. Renowned forensic artist Frank Bender is creating the drawing based on photographs of the woman's head. McAndrew said many of her facial features had been intact at that time. The skull may also be used to clarify the drawing, particularly if it offers clues to the shape of her nose and ears, police said.
Carbon County District Attorney Gary F. Dobias said this murder was "particularly gruesome," and he petitioned the court to obtain the exhumation because there is no statute of limitations for murder.
"Every murder is important. An important first step is determining the identity of the victim," he said Tuesday.
McAndrew hopes increased awareness about the missing woman sparks some tips. Today a story about a missing, pregnant woman would make national headlines, but not back then.
"It was just a different era," he said.
The remains will be returned to the Laurytown Cemetery after police have obtained all necessary evidence, he said.
Contact info
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call state police at (570) 459-3890.
ON THE WEB
To see more photos, log on to www.timesleader.com.
Jennifer Learn-Andes, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 831-7333.
To see more of The Times Leader, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesleader.com.