The Indian River County Sheriff’s Office lists 31 cold cases in its online database, dating back to the 1960s. Now, nearly 42 years after being found dead, the Sheriff’s Office has identified a Jane Doe.
Here’s what happened leading up to Jane Doe’s identification Tuesday:
March 12, 2024: Jane Doe’s identity revealed
The Sheriff’s Office announces at a news conference that DNA testing led to identifying Jane Doe as Evelyn Lois Horne Townsend, who was 43 years old when she died. Townsend was found Sept. 1, 1982, shot to death in a canal along State Road 60, according to the Sheriff’s office database.
Townsend was born May 9, 1939, in Plant City in Hillsborough County, and her last known residence was in Perry.
Although the suspects in Townsend’s death were also thought to be dead, “Now our team is working a homicide,” said Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers.
December 2023/January 2024: Road trip leads to a DNA match
Cold-case investigators road-tripped to make contact with people who be related to cold-case victims. On their last trip to Pensacola, they took DNA saliva samples from a woman who is Townsend’s daughter, according to Flowers.
April 21, 2016: Body exhumed for forensic testing
Townsend, whose body had been buried in Winter Beach Cemetery in Vero Beach, was exhumed for forensic testing to see if investigators could find any new information using modern technology.
Her body was taken to the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where researchers planned to perform a 3-D scan of her skull and have a forensic artist draw a profile of the woman based on that information, according to TCPalm reporting.
Sept. 1, 1982: Townsend’s body found
A truck driver discovered her body Sept. 1, 1982, in a watery ditch along State Road 60, about 6 miles west of Interstate 95.
More: Identity of woman in 1982 Jane Doe cold case learned through DNA testing
Medical examiners determined she had been shot four times and it had been several days before her body was found. Forensic sketch artists could only guess her appearance only from visual clues.
No matches were found in early dental or fingerprint analyses. Nor were there matches among missing-persons databases; and nothing pointed to her identity.
When her body was found, she was wearing a silver-and-gold wedding band; a turquoise ring; a short-sleeved, terrycloth, pullover blouse with gold fringe; blue jeans; and knee-high stockings. She also had scars on her abdomen, indicating possible procedures for childbirth.
Gianna Montesano is TCPalm’s trending reporter. You can contact her at gianna.montesano@tcpalm.com, 772-409-1429, or follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @gonthescene.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Timeline leading up to identifying Indian River Jane Doe from 1982
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