'Jane Doe' Still Puzzles Six Years Later
Byline: Corey Lyons
Contra Costa Newspapers
July 29, 2001
Metal scavengers patrolling the banks of the milky green Delta waters discovered a refrigerator, wrapped in rope, dumped in an irrigation ditch in 1995.
Curious, they dragged the mud-streaked appliance up the bank. They tore off the rope that had kept the door sealed shut.
Inside was a macabre sight: the badly decomposed body of a woman, bound and gagged, her secrets rotting away.
More than six years and thousands of tips later, the body has not been identified.
"To me, it's a shame," said San Joaquin County sheriff's Sgt. John Huber, who has investigated the case since the body surfaced March 29, 1995.
"Everybody is somebody. She has a family somewhere. It's a shame that, even if we don't solve the homicide case, the family should know where she is."
For now, she is Jane Doe. Most of her remains are buried at Pine Street Cemetery in Lodi. Her skull is being preserved. Even the items left inside the refrigerator -- blankets, clothing, a bag of ice and cartons of milk -- yielded nothing about her but that she may have lived somewhere in the East Bay.
By all accounts, the grim discovery along a rural stretch of Bacon Island Road in the central Delta is intriguing.
The gold 1983 Frigidaire was found in a slough near an expanse of alfalfa and asparagus farms, about 3 1/2 miles from Highway 4 near Stockton.
The body, bloated and crumbling, revealed two significant skull fractures that anthropologists believe occurred in mid-1994. She stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and had strawberry blonde hair, impeccable teeth and polished nails. She was estimated to be between 24 and 40.
A diamond ring was found on the victim's right hand, which clouded robbery or burglary as a motive.
Her clothing included a Victoria's Secret bra, Levi's shorts, a pair of size 8 Gorilla hiking boots and a pair of multicolored socks with tiny pockets for each toe.
"I'm the only one who cares for her anymore," said Huber, 48, sitting in an interview room at the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, with photos of the recovery scene scattered across a table.
"I think I stay on top of it because she was somebody. She wasn't your typical body dump. She was not a prostitute picked up in downtown Stockton and killed out at the islands.
"It astounds me that nobody has reported her missing," he said.
According to the state Department of Justice, more than 30,000 people were reported missing in California last year. Of those, 80 percent were believed to have left of their own free will.
So far, the state's Missing-Unidentified Persons Unit has logged more than 2,100 unidentified people into its growing database.
Without anyone with whom to compare dental records or DNA, the victim in the refrigerator remains a Jane Doe.
Each year, Huber combs the Justice Department's missing persons file for people who may fit his victim's timeline and general description. He narrows his search to between January 1993 and December 1994.
"And I get 16 pages, with 33 names per page, of people missing in that time frame that match my description -- and that's just in California," he said.
Indeed, trying to identify her has become a personal fixation, although a painstaking and exhausting one.
It was difficult from the start.
The body was severely decomposed from being stored in moist conditions. Detectives were unable to process fingerprints. Huber traveled up and down Highway 4, visiting scores of dentists and manicurists, hoping to find someone who might be able to help. Nothing worked.
Meanwhile, he began tracing the origin of the items left inside the appliance.
A code date on a bag of Glacier Party Ice left in the freezer, for instance, showed that it was manufactured in Concord in August 1994. That proved that the refrigerator was still being used at that time, giving detectives a window in which to focus their investigation.
The refrigerator itself was made on the East Coast and shipped to the East Bay. But it yielded no ownership information or service requests.
The diamond ring was traced to New York, where more than a million of the same model were created.
Black electrical tape used to bind the woman was linked to a distributor in Oakland. It was shipped to Oakley and sold at a military supply store there, Huber said.
Soon, a geographical portrait began to emerge in the East Bay.
The killer or killers likely lived in Contra Costa County and were familiar with the isolated roads that wrap around the Delta.
But the trail stops there.
As for Huber, he will soon return to the patrol division. He wants to become a lieutenant.
Meanwhile, there have been 17 homicides in San Joaquin County this year, more than the previous two years combined.
But Huber refuses to let his case remain unsolved. It occupies a permanent place in his career and his sense of fairness.
Somebody misses this woman, he tells himself over and over. Somebody loved her.
Contra Costa Newspapers
July 29, 2001
Metal scavengers patrolling the banks of the milky green Delta waters discovered a refrigerator, wrapped in rope, dumped in an irrigation ditch in 1995.
Curious, they dragged the mud-streaked appliance up the bank. They tore off the rope that had kept the door sealed shut.
Inside was a macabre sight: the badly decomposed body of a woman, bound and gagged, her secrets rotting away.
More than six years and thousands of tips later, the body has not been identified.
"To me, it's a shame," said San Joaquin County sheriff's Sgt. John Huber, who has investigated the case since the body surfaced March 29, 1995.
"Everybody is somebody. She has a family somewhere. It's a shame that, even if we don't solve the homicide case, the family should know where she is."
For now, she is Jane Doe. Most of her remains are buried at Pine Street Cemetery in Lodi. Her skull is being preserved. Even the items left inside the refrigerator -- blankets, clothing, a bag of ice and cartons of milk -- yielded nothing about her but that she may have lived somewhere in the East Bay.
By all accounts, the grim discovery along a rural stretch of Bacon Island Road in the central Delta is intriguing.
The gold 1983 Frigidaire was found in a slough near an expanse of alfalfa and asparagus farms, about 3 1/2 miles from Highway 4 near Stockton.
The body, bloated and crumbling, revealed two significant skull fractures that anthropologists believe occurred in mid-1994. She stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and had strawberry blonde hair, impeccable teeth and polished nails. She was estimated to be between 24 and 40.
A diamond ring was found on the victim's right hand, which clouded robbery or burglary as a motive.
Her clothing included a Victoria's Secret bra, Levi's shorts, a pair of size 8 Gorilla hiking boots and a pair of multicolored socks with tiny pockets for each toe.
"I'm the only one who cares for her anymore," said Huber, 48, sitting in an interview room at the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, with photos of the recovery scene scattered across a table.
"I think I stay on top of it because she was somebody. She wasn't your typical body dump. She was not a prostitute picked up in downtown Stockton and killed out at the islands.
"It astounds me that nobody has reported her missing," he said.
According to the state Department of Justice, more than 30,000 people were reported missing in California last year. Of those, 80 percent were believed to have left of their own free will.
So far, the state's Missing-Unidentified Persons Unit has logged more than 2,100 unidentified people into its growing database.
Without anyone with whom to compare dental records or DNA, the victim in the refrigerator remains a Jane Doe.
Each year, Huber combs the Justice Department's missing persons file for people who may fit his victim's timeline and general description. He narrows his search to between January 1993 and December 1994.
"And I get 16 pages, with 33 names per page, of people missing in that time frame that match my description -- and that's just in California," he said.
Indeed, trying to identify her has become a personal fixation, although a painstaking and exhausting one.
It was difficult from the start.
The body was severely decomposed from being stored in moist conditions. Detectives were unable to process fingerprints. Huber traveled up and down Highway 4, visiting scores of dentists and manicurists, hoping to find someone who might be able to help. Nothing worked.
Meanwhile, he began tracing the origin of the items left inside the appliance.
A code date on a bag of Glacier Party Ice left in the freezer, for instance, showed that it was manufactured in Concord in August 1994. That proved that the refrigerator was still being used at that time, giving detectives a window in which to focus their investigation.
The refrigerator itself was made on the East Coast and shipped to the East Bay. But it yielded no ownership information or service requests.
The diamond ring was traced to New York, where more than a million of the same model were created.
Black electrical tape used to bind the woman was linked to a distributor in Oakland. It was shipped to Oakley and sold at a military supply store there, Huber said.
Soon, a geographical portrait began to emerge in the East Bay.
The killer or killers likely lived in Contra Costa County and were familiar with the isolated roads that wrap around the Delta.
But the trail stops there.
As for Huber, he will soon return to the patrol division. He wants to become a lieutenant.
Meanwhile, there have been 17 homicides in San Joaquin County this year, more than the previous two years combined.
But Huber refuses to let his case remain unsolved. It occupies a permanent place in his career and his sense of fairness.
Somebody misses this woman, he tells himself over and over. Somebody loved her.
posted by Corey at 9:50 PM
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