NV ELKO COUNTY JANE DOE: WF, 20-35, found off I-80 near the Utah border, NV - 16 Nov 1993 - Maybe from WY

125UFNV - Unidentified Female


Reconstructions of the victim.

Date of Discovery: November 16, 1993
Location of Discovery: Elko County, Nevada
Estimated Date of Death: 6 days prior
State of Remains: Not recognizable - Decomposing/putrefaction
Cause of Death: Homicide - shot twice in the chest and beaten

Physical Description​

Estimated Age: 20-35 years old
Race: White
Gender: Female
Height: 5'7" to 5'8"
Weight: 144 lbs.
Hair Color: Blond
Eye Color: Brown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: She had a scar on her right calf area. She may have previously gone through childbirth. A single pierce mark in each earlobe (no earrings present). A nodular 0.3 to 0.5 cm. nevus-like lesion on the preauricular scalp, above the tragus of the right ear - a depressed plaque-like mottled brown-gray ovoid 3 x 4 cm. scar on the back of the distal right lower leg - a similar colored 3 x 1 cm oval horizontal scar below this and also on the back of the right lower leg. Wore pink nail polish.

Identifiers​

Dentals: Available. Her teeth were in excellent condition but was in the process of having a root canal done on the lower right molar (tooth 31). Had all 32 teeth, impacted wisdom teeth.
Fingerprints: Available.
DNA: Available.

Clothing & Personal Items​

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

Circumstances of Discovery​

The victim was found off the northbound side of Interstate 80, near the Utah border. The site where the body was found lies on the edge of a vast and desolate desert bisected by one of the nation's busiest highways.

An autopsy found evidence of alcohol and marijuana in the woman's system.

The victim was found completely nude, lying on her back, her arms spread out to her side in the shape of a cross, legs slightly parted. Investigators believe her killer may have purposefully posed the body. Detectives found drag marks on the ground from the victim's heels. She had been shot twice in the chest with a small-caliber weapon. One of the bullets pierced her heart. She had also been beaten.

Police believe the victim was killed at another location and later dumped at the I-80 turnoff. Tire tracks found at the site point to a mid-size to large vehicle, possibly a pickup or van.

Hair samples sent to a Salt Lake City laboratory matched isotope sequences with drinking water that pinpointed where the woman had lived. The victim spent the last seven months of her life near the town of Afton, Wyoming.

Investigating Agency(s)
Agency Name: Elko County Coroner's Office
Agency Contact Person: Dennis Journigan
Agency Phone Number: 775-738-8936 or 775-777-2524
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: 1235-93

Agency Name: Elko County Sheriff Department
Agency Contact Person: N/A
Agency Phone Number: 702-738-3421
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: Unknown

Agency Name: Washoe County Medical Examiner/Coroner
Agency Contact Person: Ellen Clark
Agency Phone Number: 775-785-6114
Agency E-Mail: eclark@washoecounty.us%20
Agency Case Number: 1235-93

NCIC Case Number: Unknown
NamUs Case Number: 4920

Information Source(s)
NamUs
Washoe County Coroner's Office
Missing Children...HELP Center

125UFNV

#JaneDoe was found off the northbound side of Interstate 80, near the Utah border in the area of Elko, Nevada in 1993

The victim was found completely nude, lying on her back, her arms spread out to her side in the shape of a cross, legs slightly parted. Investigators believe her killer may have purposefully posed the body. Detectives found drag marks on the...

www.crimewatchers.net

 

[Red Rover]

She was found around the same time as Bitter Creek Betty and Sheridan County Jane Doe were found in Wyoming. One was found nude as well. They were confirmed to have been murdered by the same person through DNA evidence much later. This young lady was thought to have lived in Wyoming for a time. Maybe a connection? Interesting. Below is a link to a decent write up of the Bitter Creek Betty and Sheridan County Jane Doe cases.

Bitter Creek Betty & Sheridan County Jane Doe • Morbidology

In 1992, two women were found in different locations in the Wyoming wilderness. The DNA found at each crime scene concluded that they were both killed by the same person. Their identity - and who killed them - has never been solved.

morbidology.com

 

[Akoya]

The victim was found off the northbound side of Interstate 80, near the Utah border. The site where the body was found lies on the edge of a vast and desolate desert bisected by one of the nation's busiest highways. An autopsy found evidence of alcohol and marijuana in the woman's system. The victim was found completely nude, lying on her back, her arms spread out to her side in the shape of a cross, legs slightly parted. Investigators believe her killer may have purposefully posed the body. Detectives found drag marks on the ground from the victim's heels. She had been shot twice in the chest with a small-caliber weapon. One of the bullets pierced her heart. She had also been beaten.

Police believe the victim was killed at another location and later dumped at the I-80 turnoff. Tire tracks found at the site point to a mid-size to large vehicle, possibly a pickup or van. Hair samples sent to a Salt Lake City laboratory matched isotope sequences with drinking water that pinpointed where the woman had lived. The victim spent the last seven months of her life near the town of Afton, Wyoming.

 

[Akoya]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...ims_in_the_United_States#Elko_County_Jane_Doe

Elko County Jane Doe

The nude body of a female, also known as the Shafter Jane Doe, was discovered on November 16, 1993 around six days after her murder had occurred. She was aged between 20 and 35, and had been shot twice: once in the chest region, and once in the back. She had also been beaten. She was five feet eight inches and 144 pounds with brown eyes and pierced ears, although the earrings were missing, possibly being taken by the killer. She also had painted her fingernails pink at one time.

After examination, it was determined that she had used both alcohol and marijuana prior to her death, possibly given birth to a child in the past, and had very healthy teeth. Isotope analysis showed her recent place of residence to the city of Afton, Wyoming. Tire tracks near the body indicated that the killer's vehicle was either a pickup truck or a van. The victim had a mole above her right ear and two scars on her lower right leg.

 

[Akoya]

https://elkodaily.com/news/local/le...cle_1b09a44c-8584-5a82-bdf5-546beb9b7d4a.html

Leads keep coming in Shafter Jane cold case
By JARED DuBACH- Staff Writer Mar 25, 2010

ELKO — Just as some leads run out, others start up in the ongoing Shafter Jane Doe cold case.

Elko County sheriff’s Detective Dennis Journigan has been reviewing the case since he received chemical analysis results back in early 2009 that used isotope information from the murder victim’s hair to determine she’d lived the last few months of her life near Afton, Wyo.

Both the Casper Star-Tribune and Billings Gazette, sister papers of the Elko Daily Free Press, picked up the story on Shafter Jane, the name given to a woman whose body was found Nov. 16, 1993, at the Shafter exit off Interstate 80 in eastern Elko County. As a result, Journigan said he was contacted almost immediately in the form of phone calls and e-mails after the story ran.

Some of the leads prompted him to contact authorities in Sweetwater, Wyo., about a missing woman in their records who was about the same age, disappeared about the same time, had also had a child and had a burn scar on the inside of her leg.

But with all the circumstantial facts adding up, the hard evidence of the dental records and fingerprints just couldn’t clinch it. It wasn’t the same woman.

Still, just as one door closes another opens.

Journigan said he recently received “another bit of info” from a man who claims to be a former manager at the Orvis outdoor recreation store near Jackson, Wyo. He claims to have worked with a woman who also went missing in the same period of time Shafter Jane was found in Elko County. Jackson Hole is just north of Afton.

The former manager claims the woman worked at Orvis up until that time and several things fit. Although he can’t recall the woman’s name, he said the FBI composite photo looks very much like her. She, too, was pregnant, about the same age and had — as Journigan puts it — “old man trouble.”

But it may take some time before the woman’s identity can be found, if at all, through employment records kept by the company. Journigan said Orvis has two headquarters and the search would mean being able to find one woman who worked there 18 years ago. Journigan said he also plans to contact the former sheriff of Teton County to see if he recalls anything or if the records there turn up anything.

“Those are pieces of info that keep coming in,” Journigan said.

Anyone with information on the Shafter Jane case or any other missing or unidentified person may call the Elko County Sheriff’s Office at 738-3421 or anonymously at 738-HELP.

 

[Akoya]

Cold case turns up link to Wyoming

CASPER — Found near a lonesome Nevada interstate, she gave little away for more than 15 years.

billingsgazette.com

Cold case turns up link to Wyoming
By WILLIAM BROWNING Casper Star-Tribune Feb 28, 2010


CASPER — Found near a lonesome Nevada interstate, she gave little away for more than 15 years.

Authorities believe her body — posed like a cross, nude, shot once in the back, once in the chest — went unnoticed for roughly a week. An Interstate 80 traveler stopped to stretch his legs and stumbled across the lurid scene on a fall afternoon in 1993.

A month later, locals put her in the indigent section of the Elko County cemetery. And she has laid there since, silent and unknown — a victim of a violent end with any notion of justice as faint as headlights thrown out across a Great Basin Desert night.

Late last year, though, with the help of forensic technology, the woman whose donated headstone asks, “Who am I?” whispered from her grave a clue authorities hope may finally answer that question.

Hair sample

In October, a detective with the Elko County Sheriff’s Office sent a hair sample from the woman to a Salt Lake City laboratory. By matching isotope sequences in the specimen with that of drinking water, technicians were able to pinpoint an area in the country where the woman had lived.

The lab concluded that for the last seven months of her life, she resided in Lincoln County, Wyo., near the town of Afton.

“Maybe she was a seasonal worker there,” Detective Dennis Journigan said. “Maybe she had family there. Who knows?”

Whatever the circumstances may be, Journigan said pinning an identity to the woman — an act that would unseal her history, family and friends — could one day help reveal a killer.

“We’re hoping that someone somewhere recognizes her, or remembers her in some way, and can help us figure out who she was.”

‘Shafter Jane Doe’

A California geologist driving across northern Nevada on Nov. 16, 1993, found the site where someone had tucked blond, pretty “Shafter Jane Doe” in sagebrush. The name history pinned on her came about because she was found near the Interstate 80 exit for Shafter, a near-ghost town in northeast Nevada.

An autopsy produced a few vague but important details.

She was 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighed roughly 140 pounds and had given birth to at least one child.

Her teeth — she had all of them — showed her to be roughly 27 years old at the time of her death. She was in the process of having a root canal.

While that information has led authorities to dentist offices and hospitals, her fingertips have them seeking out beauty parlors. “It looks like they were professionally done,” Journigan said of the woman’s fingernails, which were painted bright pink.

Each ear had been pierced once, though she was found with no jewelry.

A medical examiner said a 2-by-4-inch mark on the back of the woman’s right calf was a burn scar. Journigan, however, thinks it may actually have been a birth mark.

She was shot twice with a medium-caliber handgun. She had also been severely beaten, but Journigan said there were no signs of sexual assault.

There were trace amounts of alcohol and marijuana in her system.

Because the body had sat in desert elements for at least six days — “She was fairly well degraded,” Journigan said — investigators managed only a partial fingerprint from her right thumb. That print, bounced through every database available, has led nowhere.

A portion of her skull sits today in the Minnesota State Crime Lab. DNA tests are being run, as investigators wait for results with crossed fingers.


Eaton a suspect?

He points out the investigation’s official stance is that there are “no suspects” in the case at the moment. But Journigan, a law enforcement veteran of 30-plus years, harbors a titillating theory.

The detective said authorities have placed convicted murderer Dale Wayne Eaton in the Elko area from 1992 to 1995.

“We’ve got him here when she was found and prior to that,” he said, adding he was arrested there in 1992 for domestic violence.

Eaton has been on death row since 2004, when a Natrona County jury determined he should die for the 1988 kidnapping, rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell.

Authorities say not long after Shafter Jane Doe’s body was found, someone reported having spoken to a white male “at about sunrise Nov. 9 in Oasis. ... (i)nvestigators believe the homicide occurred around that time,” according to reports.

The town of Oasis, Nev., is approximately 12 miles north of Shafter.

Authorities searched in vain for the man the witness claimed to have spoken to. In 1993, not long after the body was found, the Elko daily newspaper reported the man to be “6 feet 1 inch tall with brown hair and a short beard.”

According to the Wyoming Department of Corrections, Eaton, a 56-year-old white male, is 5 feet 9 inches tall with brown hair and eyes.

What piques Journigan’s interest, though, is the description of the vehicle the man seen in Oasis was allegedly driving — “a mid-1970s station wagon,” possibly painted green and brown.

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Journigan believes the vehicle, which he described as a “camper van,” might be connected to Eaton, whose 2004 trial revealed he owned a 1979 Dodge pickup, a 1963 Ford truck and a passenger van.

If Eaton is behind the murder, though, Journigan doubts he will ever confess.

“He’s not talking,” he said of the condemned man.

‘Who am I?’

Elko County has had 19 unsolved homicides since 1972. Shafter Jane Doe’s case, though, sunk deep in Elko.

Journigan, who chips away at the unsolved murder with every clue he drums up, said his department has spent more time and money trying to identify her than others.

“The town has, in a way, adopted her, made her one of us,” said Yvette Waters.

The executive director of the Elko County Committee Against Domestic Violence, Waters still tears up when talking about the case. In 2003, roughly 10 years after the body was found, she took part in a memorial service at the gravesite. A local funeral home donated a headstone that was placed at the burial site. It reads, “Shafter Jane Doe. Found Nov. 16, 1993. Who am I?”

“For me, its a reminder for people that there is an answer out there,” Waters said. “There are very few people around here now who actually were here when she was found. When we’re gone, no one is going to be here to remind people what happened.”

She keeps an FBI-generated portrait of the dead woman on her office wall for the same reason.

“I’ve looked at her face every day since March 15, 1996.”

Waters travels to the Elko County Cemetery each month to visit the gravesite. The last time she left flowers was Nov. 16, the anniversary of the day the body was found.

She describes the emergence of the new Wyoming connection as “phenomenal,” and hopes it leads to the unknown woman’s biography being colored in.

“It’s my hope,” Waters said. “That we can replace her headstone one day with one that begins, ‘I am ... .”

Contact William Browning at william.browning@trib.com or 307-266-0534.

 

[Akoya]

 

[Akoya]

 

[Akoya]

Shafter Jane, the name given to a woman whose body was found Nov. 16, 1993, at the Shafter exit off Interstate 80 in eastern Elko County.

 

[Kimster]

She was found around the same time as Bitter Creek Betty and Sheridan County Jane Doe were found in Wyoming. One was found nude as well. They were confirmed to have been murdered by the same person through DNA evidence much later. This young lady was thought to have lived in Wyoming for a time. Maybe a connection? Interesting. Below is a link to a decent write up of the Bitter Creek Betty and Sheridan County Jane Doe cases.

Bitter Creek Betty & Sheridan County Jane Doe • Morbidology

In 1992, two women were found in different locations in the Wyoming wilderness. The DNA found at each crime scene concluded that they were both killed by the same person. Their identity - and who killed them - has never been solved.

morbidology.com

I missed that connection in the past. Do you know if either cases are having their DNA checked?