Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Bambi Lynn Dick Part 1: Amarillo Jane Doe
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: The Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
- 0:05Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. By the time the early nineteen
- 0:11Speaker 1: eighties were giving way to the mid law enforcement in
- 0:14Speaker 1: and around the Texas panhandled city of Amarillo were no
- 0:18Speaker 1: strangers to murder investigations. It was a far cry from
- 0:22Speaker 1: the city's humble beginnings. Before eighteen eighty seven, Amarillo was
- 0:28Speaker 1: little more than a trading post primarily serving cattle ranchers,
- 0:33Speaker 1: but by design, which started with the promise to those
- 0:36Speaker 1: ranchers of a business and residential lot in town, was
- 0:40Speaker 1: quickly voted in as the seat of Potter County, quickly
- 0:44Speaker 1: meaning within a year, when the city of Amarillo was
- 0:48Speaker 1: still just a concept called Oneida. The Fort Worth and
- 0:52Speaker 1: Denver City railroad line was laid through the area shortly thereafter,
- 0:57Speaker 1: and though it began as a whistle stop trader at first,
- 1:01Speaker 1: it was envisioned as much more, which is precisely what
- 1:05Speaker 1: it became, and the name Oneita wasn't about to stick.
- 1:10Speaker 1: New Mexicans had long called the trade center Amarillo, the
- 1:14Speaker 1: Spanish word for yellow, when correctly pronounced, because of the
- 1:18Speaker 1: color of the soil that ran along the bed of
- 1:20Speaker 1: the creek there, and the several species of the area's
- 1:23Speaker 1: wildflowers that abundantly bloomed in the summer and spring, most
- 1:28Speaker 1: also yellow in color. Originally intended to be called Amarillo outsiders,
- 1:35Speaker 1: errors eventually won out and Amarillo, Texas was born within
- 1:41Speaker 1: a dozen years in record time. Seemingly it was a
- 1:44Speaker 1: full fledged city, boasting a court house, three newspapers, three churches,
- 1:50Speaker 1: a three story schoolhouse, a college, city parks, plenty of merchants,
- 1:55Speaker 1: and put on the first of many annual tri state fairs,
- 2:00Speaker 1: all before a city government was established. Manufacturing mills and
- 2:05Speaker 1: a school district soon followed, as did Amarillo's biggest boom,
- 2:10Speaker 1: the discovery of natural gas and oil. The age of
- 2:15Speaker 1: Art Deco architecture, followed by the Great Depression and then
- 2:19Speaker 1: World War II, changed both the look and the people
- 2:22Speaker 1: of Amarillo, as did the opening of the Texas State
- 2:26Speaker 1: Technical Institute in nineteen seventy, which took over the abandoned
- 2:30Speaker 1: Air Force base there. At its core, the city of ranchers, roughnecks,
- 2:36Speaker 1: old money and working class folks continued developing and maintained
- 2:41Speaker 1: its prosperity even throughout the toughest of times, but the
- 2:46Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, as it did across the state, ushered in
- 2:50Speaker 1: a dangerous age. The thriving, modest city of Amarillo, split
- 2:56Speaker 1: between Potter and Randall Counties, became like any others similarly
- 3:01Speaker 1: populated Texas city. Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen eighty three,
- 3:07Speaker 1: authorities had seen their fair share of violent crime and
- 3:10Speaker 1: had found their fair share of bodies, stabbing, bludgeoning, strangling,
- 3:16Speaker 1: and gunshots. They'd seen just about everything in the period
- 3:20Speaker 1: leading up to the most dangerous and deadly years the
- 3:24Speaker 1: state of Texas would ever see. A few of the
- 3:27Speaker 1: homicide victims were unidentified for short periods of time, but
- 3:31Speaker 1: most identifications took no longer than a month. That changed
- 3:37Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen eighty three, when the body
- 3:39Speaker 1: of a female murder victim was found several miles north
- 3:43Speaker 1: of town. October eighth, nineteen eighty three, was a beautiful
- 4:10Speaker 1: day in Amarillo. It was overcast, but not with storm clouds. Instead, velvety,
- 4:17Speaker 1: perfectly white cumuli traveled across the picturesque blue sky, reflecting
- 4:23Speaker 1: the Sun's bright rays even when they hid the celestial behemoth.
- 4:28Speaker 1: The day was ideal for a ride, and anyway it
- 4:31Speaker 1: was Saturday, the weekend, and a fourteen year old boy
- 4:35Speaker 1: will call Johnny wanted to make the most of it
- 4:37Speaker 1: before hitting the books again. On Monday, about seventeen miles
- 4:42Speaker 1: north of town off US Highway to eighty seven in
- 4:45Speaker 1: the early evening, Johnny rode his motorcycle across the dusty
- 4:49Speaker 1: side roads and scrubby rolling grassland. The surroundings were nothing
- 4:55Speaker 1: new to Johnny, and in fact, he was quite familiar
- 4:58Speaker 1: with the terrain. If their was something out of the ordinary,
- 5:01Speaker 1: it was likely to catch his eye. At around five pm,
- 5:06Speaker 1: something did. Eighty feet east of Highway two eighty seven,
- 5:11Speaker 1: Johnny saw what looked like feet protruding from a drainage culvert.
- 5:16Speaker 1: He got closer and his eyes hadn't deceived him. Johnny
- 5:21Speaker 1: raced from the scene to notify the Sheriff's office. Authorities,
- 5:27Speaker 1: including investigators from the Potter Randall Metro Special Crimes Unit,
- 5:32Speaker 1: descended on the scene not long after. One of the
- 5:36Speaker 1: first things responding detectives noticed was a trail of dirt
- 5:40Speaker 1: beginning at the road and leading to the colvert, as
- 5:43Speaker 1: if something had been dragged. No doubt they thought this
- 5:47Speaker 1: victim's body, whose shoeless feet stuck out from the large drain.
- 5:53Speaker 1: After examining a small proximity around the body and documenting
- 5:57Speaker 1: the scene, deputies pulled the box from the covert. It
- 6:02Speaker 1: was a woman. She wore blue jeans, a white bra,
- 6:05Speaker 1: and white cotton socks. The mark left on her neck
- 6:10Speaker 1: was from a ligature strangulation. That much was obvious. An
- 6:16Speaker 1: exact age in anything else was impossible to determine, as
- 6:20Speaker 1: there was no identification found on or near the body.
- 6:24Speaker 1: Potter Randall Special Crimes Unit Investigator's preliminary determination was that
- 6:30Speaker 1: the victim was about twenty five to thirty years old
- 6:33Speaker 1: and had been dead at least twenty four hours. She'd
- 6:36Speaker 1: been lying face down in the dirt most of that time,
- 6:39Speaker 1: and lividity had fixed The dirt and debris in her
- 6:44Speaker 1: nose and mouth showed she'd been dragged from the highway
- 6:47Speaker 1: to the covert by her feet. All of these things
- 6:51Speaker 1: rendered her facial features difficult to make out, but it
- 6:55Speaker 1: was easy to deduce that at one time the victim
- 6:58Speaker 1: was well kempt. Her light brown to medium blonde hair
- 7:02Speaker 1: was stylish. The victim's fingernails were well manicured, as were
- 7:07Speaker 1: her toenails, which were painted bright red. Still, one investigator
- 7:13Speaker 1: remarked identifying her was likely going to be a matter
- 7:16Speaker 1: of the victim not showing up for work Monday and
- 7:19Speaker 1: a worried coworker phoning her loved ones or police. Potter
- 7:24Speaker 1: County Justice of the Piece Ray Bird, ordered the victim's
- 7:28Speaker 1: body be sent to pathologist doctor Ralph Erdman to undergo
- 7:32Speaker 1: an autopsy. After collecting an inventory of their victim's clothing
- 7:39Speaker 1: and jewelry, investigators had even more reason to believe they'd
- 7:43Speaker 1: get her identified sooner than later. The genes she wore
- 7:48Speaker 1: were Britannia brand, and her pink underwear had the word
- 7:52Speaker 1: Thursday stitched in red. She wore three rings, one a
- 7:57Speaker 1: red colored garnet or ruby b earthstone ring, another a
- 8:02Speaker 1: diamond friendship or promise ring, and the last a men's
- 8:07Speaker 1: wedding band that had been wrapped at the palm facing
- 8:10Speaker 1: side with a band aid so it fit her finger.
- 8:14Speaker 1: Her ears were double pierced. Neither the victim's shoes nor
- 8:18Speaker 1: blouse were found at autopsy. The day following the discovery
- 8:23Speaker 1: of her body, more significant identifiers were found. She wore
- 8:29Speaker 1: contacts on her hazel colored eyes. The victims stood five
- 8:33Speaker 1: feet seven inches tall and weighed one hundred and twenty
- 8:36Speaker 1: to one hundred and forty pounds. On her left forearm
- 8:40Speaker 1: was a mole or birthmark. The detail that perhaps might
- 8:45Speaker 1: have identified her the fastest was a third nipple under
- 8:49Speaker 1: her right breast. However, when the victim's description hit the
- 8:53Speaker 1: Amarillo Globe Times and other Texas newspapers on Monday, October tenth,
- 8:59Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, that detail was left out. It would
- 9:03Speaker 1: stay left out for years. West Texas and Panhandle pathologist
- 9:10Speaker 1: doctor Ralph Erdman estimated the Jane Doe's age as late
- 9:14Speaker 1: twenties to early thirties, which, like many of his findings
- 9:18Speaker 1: over the years, whether right or wrong, matched law enforcement's estimate.
- 9:24Speaker 1: The death was ruled a homicide. Of course, the cause
- 9:28Speaker 1: strangulation from behind using a rope or cord like ligature.
- 9:34Speaker 1: It was probably late Thursday, October sixth or Friday October seventh,
- 9:39Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three when the victim was killed. Other than
- 9:43Speaker 1: being strangled, the unidentified female had no injuries or trauma.
- 9:48Speaker 1: Doctor Erdman reported. When the toxicology report came back, it
- 9:53Speaker 1: showed no signs at all of drugs or alcohol. She
- 9:58Speaker 1: was not sexually assaulted, the pathologist reported, However, there are
- 10:03Speaker 1: reasons to question this finding. First, clothing had been removed
- 10:09Speaker 1: from the victim. Next, within ten years, virtually all of
- 10:14Speaker 1: doctor Ralph Erdman's autopsies came into question when he was
- 10:17Speaker 1: convicted of falsifying his reports to support police or prosecutor
- 10:22Speaker 1: narratives to maximize his profits. Doctor Erdman also accepted more
- 10:28Speaker 1: bodies to examine than any one pathologist could possibly handle.
- 10:33Speaker 1: The final reason to doubt the findings of the autopsy
- 10:37Speaker 1: in regard to the lack of evidence of sexual assault
- 10:40Speaker 1: wouldn't be known for more than two and a half decades.
- 10:55Speaker 1: On Monday, October tenth, nineteen eighty three, about two miles
- 10:59Speaker 1: south of where an unidentified homicide victim had been found
- 11:03Speaker 1: the previous Saturday, a woman's blouse and luggage was discovered.
- 11:09Speaker 1: Authorities scrambled to connect the luggage to their victim, but
- 11:13Speaker 1: eventually it was proven to belong to someone else. Also
- 11:18Speaker 1: that day, Potter Randall's Special Crimes Unit investigators released a
- 11:22Speaker 1: drawing of their Jane Doe to the press. The sketch
- 11:26Speaker 1: was released in newspapers and on television the following day.
- 11:31Speaker 1: By that time, Officers with the unit had ordered and
- 11:34Speaker 1: received X rays and dental charts, sent fingerprints to the
- 11:38Speaker 1: Texas Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of
- 11:42Speaker 1: Investigations in Washington, d C. They'd also fielded more than
- 11:47Speaker 1: thirty calls, none of which were proving to be the
- 11:50Speaker 1: lead they needed. Calls continued to come in during the
- 11:54Speaker 1: following days, but few ever seemed promising. Still, they were
- 11:59Speaker 1: all checked out when almost a week had passed since
- 12:03Speaker 1: their Jane Doe was discovered. Investigators with a Special Crimes
- 12:07Speaker 1: Unit continued to sift through missing persons reports looking for
- 12:11Speaker 1: a match. Meanwhile, one investigator headed to Colorado to follow
- 12:16Speaker 1: up on a tip they'd received. A hitchhiker at a
- 12:19Speaker 1: Colorado truck stop had taken a ride to Amarillo with
- 12:22Speaker 1: a truck driver. Authorities knew the lead wouldn't identify their victim,
- 12:28Speaker 1: but it just might put them on the right track.
- 12:31Speaker 1: But that lead and others during the first week of
- 12:34Speaker 1: investigation led nowhere. It began an unfortunate trend. Forensic specialists
- 12:43Speaker 1: in hair, synthetic fibers, and bones were called in to assist,
- 12:47Speaker 1: and to their credit, the Special Crimes Unit refused any
- 12:51Speaker 1: and all help from psychics. Most of the investigators believed
- 12:56Speaker 1: they had no time to waste on such efforts, as
- 12:59Speaker 1: they were already overwhelmed with tips, and no matter how
- 13:03Speaker 1: far out or unlikely they seemed, all none other worldly
- 13:08Speaker 1: leads were being pursued. Teletypes had been sent out to
- 13:12Speaker 1: agencies across the nation through the Department's computer system and
- 13:16Speaker 1: into the Missing Persons file of the National Crime Information Center,
- 13:21Speaker 1: or NCIC, a little less than a year before, President
- 13:25Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan signed the Missing Children's Act into law, which
- 13:29Speaker 1: established a national clearinghouse of missing people using NCIC. Investigators
- 13:36Speaker 1: with the unit were glad to have this particular resource
- 13:39Speaker 1: at their disposal, but also believed that there were many
- 13:43Speaker 1: kinks to iron out, namely the facts that there were
- 13:47Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies across the country that hadn't yet adhered
- 13:50Speaker 1: to this law, particularly the smaller agencies, and there were
- 13:55Speaker 1: also missing folks being entered but not getting hits. Anyway,
- 14:00Speaker 1: they had other leads to follow in the meantime, The
- 14:04Speaker 1: unit tracked down the victim's Britannia brand genes to Washington State,
- 14:09Speaker 1: where they were imported from overseas, but from there the
- 14:13Speaker 1: pair they needed traced could have been sent to virtually
- 14:16Speaker 1: any retailer at any mall in the United States. Investigators
- 14:21Speaker 1: tried tracking down the victim's polycon to blue tented contact lenses,
- 14:27Speaker 1: but like the genes, the prescription and the lenses themselves
- 14:30Speaker 1: could have been from anywhere. Frustrated by their lack of success,
- 14:35Speaker 1: investigator Jimmy Boydston told a reporter for the Amarillo Globe
- 14:40Speaker 1: Times that if Jane Doe isn't a local, they might
- 14:43Speaker 1: never find out who she is. Somebody might file a
- 14:47Speaker 1: missing person's case in Wisconsin that they don't pick up
- 14:50Speaker 1: on in Amarillo, Boydston commented, and that department in Wisconsin
- 14:55Speaker 1: might never see the reports of their Jane Doe. The
- 14:59Speaker 1: investigtion gator had no way of knowing how prescient that
- 15:03Speaker 1: passing explanation would prove to be. The Potter Randall Special
- 15:09Speaker 1: Crimes Unit was created in nineteen eighty one for two
- 15:12Speaker 1: primary reasons, the first to cut down on the cost
- 15:16Speaker 1: that investigations into major crimes incur, and the second to
- 15:21Speaker 1: create a team of the most experienced investigators to meet
- 15:25Speaker 1: the challenges presented by the steep rise in violent crime.
- 15:29Speaker 1: More or less a permanent task force, the unit, of course,
- 15:34Speaker 1: consisted of investigators from the Potter County and Randall County
- 15:37Speaker 1: Sheriff's offices and also the Amarillo Police Department, primarily created
- 15:44Speaker 1: for the investigation of homicides. Each of these agencies would
- 15:48Speaker 1: be responsible for the costs associated with the crime that
- 15:52Speaker 1: happened in their jurisdiction, but would have immediate access to
- 15:56Speaker 1: the resources of all the departments and the mines of
- 16:00Speaker 1: the specialized, forward thinking detectives who made up the unit.
- 16:05Speaker 1: There wasn't a group of investigators for hundreds of miles
- 16:08Speaker 1: in any direction better equipped to deal with the problem
- 16:12Speaker 1: they had identifying the victim of a senseless and merciless
- 16:16Speaker 1: act of violence. Among the best and brightest of them
- 16:21Speaker 1: was Sergeant Modena Holmes, who, before the creation of the
- 16:25Speaker 1: unit in nineteen eighty one, was an Amarillo policewoman. She
- 16:30Speaker 1: was one of the officers in the Potter Randall Special
- 16:32Speaker 1: Crimes Unit who didn't necessarily agree with the findings of
- 16:36Speaker 1: pathologist doctor Ralph Erdman concerning their Jane Doe. Sergeant Holmes
- 16:42Speaker 1: took issue with Erdman's age determination, which was a much
- 16:46Speaker 1: larger range than usual in such cases. His report put
- 16:51Speaker 1: their Jane Doe's age between sixteen and thirty years old.
- 16:56Speaker 1: Even at the scene the day the victim was discovered,
- 16:59Speaker 1: Holmes didn't they she was older than twenty. The victim's
- 17:03Speaker 1: wisdom teeth were formed, but not broken through. Erdmann's autopsy
- 17:07Speaker 1: report noted, a fact that only further confirmed the sergeant's
- 17:11Speaker 1: estimation of the victim being between sixteen and twenty years
- 17:15Speaker 1: of age. Sergeant Modina Holmes was a detective's detective. Her
- 17:21Speaker 1: observations about Jane Doe were keen and astute, most for
- 17:27Speaker 1: whatever reason, were kept out of the media. Having recently
- 17:31Speaker 1: trained in forensic odentology, Sergeant Holmes immediately noticed the victim
- 17:36Speaker 1: had no upper right lateral incisor. It hadn't been removed. Rather,
- 17:42Speaker 1: it was a matter of genetics. Another important identifier the
- 17:46Speaker 1: investigator was paying attention to was the significant gap between
- 17:50Speaker 1: her two front teeth. Jane Doe was well groomed, certainly
- 17:55Speaker 1: not a transient. She didn't fit the typical description of
- 17:59Speaker 1: a sex worker either, investigators believed. Holmes observed that the
- 18:05Speaker 1: victim had no tan lines. That, particularly back then, was
- 18:11Speaker 1: highly unusual for a teenaged girl or young woman. Having
- 18:15Speaker 1: just gone through a summer in Texas. This meant Sergeant
- 18:20Speaker 1: Holmes deduced that her Jane Doe, was most likely from
- 18:24Speaker 1: a northern state. The amount of clues they possessed versus
- 18:29Speaker 1: the little they knew had the Potter Randall Special Crimes
- 18:32Speaker 1: Unit irritated. They knew so much, yet so little. Soon
- 18:40Speaker 1: after the discovery of Jane Doe, Deputy Chief Investigator for
- 18:44Speaker 1: the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Harvey P. Pratt, completed
- 18:49Speaker 1: an enhanced photograph of Jane Doe. Though they'd already released
- 18:54Speaker 1: a drawing, authorities were unable to release an actual photograph
- 18:58Speaker 1: because of the condition of the victim. Now they could
- 19:03Speaker 1: sort of. Pratt, who innovated the process of painting on
- 19:07Speaker 1: top of a photo of an unidentified person to revitalize
- 19:11Speaker 1: their facial features, had been contacted early on by Special
- 19:15Speaker 1: Crimes Unit coordinator Jimmy Boydston. The photo was released to
- 19:20Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies across the nation and locally. Had it
- 19:25Speaker 1: made it into more newspapers outside Amarillo, perhaps the mystery
- 19:29Speaker 1: behind Jane Doe's identity would have been solved then and there.
- 19:34Speaker 1: But the enhanced photo did not make its way very
- 19:36Speaker 1: far out of Amarillo in any way that would have
- 19:39Speaker 1: allowed the national public to see it. Twenty or thirty
- 19:43Speaker 1: years ago, people were not as mobile, but there are
- 19:46Speaker 1: killers now who move across the country committing the same crimes.
- 19:50Speaker 1: OSBI Chief Investigator Pratt said when explaining why he began
- 19:55Speaker 1: painting over photographs of unidentified victims. His thoughts then veered
- 20:01Speaker 1: to another important innovation. He began recommending computerized repositories of
- 20:07Speaker 1: information about violent criminals and suspected violent criminals. We found
- 20:13Speaker 1: instances where a person would commit certain sex crimes in
- 20:16Speaker 1: one town, then move on to other places where he
- 20:19Speaker 1: would commit the same crimes again. A pattern develops, but
- 20:23Speaker 1: the various law enforcement agencies had no way of knowing this.
- 20:28Speaker 1: We need to track down the traveling criminals. Concerning the
- 20:33Speaker 1: Jane doe found north of Amarillo, Texas, in October of
- 20:36Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, Pratt's comments about mobile offenders seemed spot on,
- 20:43Speaker 1: but without an identity, finding a suspect was next to impossible.
- 20:58Speaker 1: Though they kept from carrying Amarillo Jane doe for as
- 21:02Speaker 1: long as possible, both a lack of money and nature
- 21:06Speaker 1: demanded it be done. Initially, the unidentified victim was to
- 21:11Speaker 1: be buried in a pauper's grave at Potter's Field, a
- 21:15Speaker 1: corner of Lono Cemetery's southeast set aside for the area's
- 21:19Speaker 1: indigent or unknown, where stone markers about the size of
- 21:24Speaker 1: a brick sit atop their final resting places. Maurice Schuler
- 21:30Speaker 1: and Mac Gordon of Schooler Gordon Funeral Directors came forward
- 21:34Speaker 1: to provide a casket, clothing, funeral service, burial plot at
- 21:39Speaker 1: Memorial Gardens Cemetery, and headstone for Jane Doe. We want
- 21:45Speaker 1: people to know that Amarillo does care, Gordon said. The
- 21:49Speaker 1: man and his partner had daughters, he added, and should
- 21:52Speaker 1: the victim ever be identified, they wished to spare her
- 21:56Speaker 1: family the grief of removing her from a pauper's grave.
- 22:00Speaker 1: Pastor Winfred Moore of Amarillo's First Baptist Church stepped in
- 22:05Speaker 1: to officiate the funeral services. Residents and authorities gathered to
- 22:10Speaker 1: mourn the murder victim, and the service was videotaped. After
- 22:16Speaker 1: the enhanced photo of Jane Doe was released in the
- 22:19Speaker 1: Amarillo Globe Times and on the local television newscasts, calls
- 22:24Speaker 1: poured in to the Potter Randall's Special Crimes Unit. In
- 22:28Speaker 1: the first mention of their Jane Doe having a birthmark,
- 22:32Speaker 1: which is what they called the third nipple under her
- 22:34Speaker 1: right breast. Investigator Jimmy Boydston said the department was able
- 22:38Speaker 1: to eliminate ten calls right off the bat based on
- 22:42Speaker 1: that dentals and blood type information. Of the remaining fifty,
- 22:48Speaker 1: none seemed particularly strong, though Boydston said they'd all be
- 22:52Speaker 1: followed through to exhaustion, and there's no doubt they were
- 22:57Speaker 1: attempts to get the nationally syndicated Telegs Vision program unsolved.
- 23:01Speaker 1: Mysteries to cover the case were in vain. There wasn't
- 23:05Speaker 1: enough meat on the story's bones, they said. After that,
- 23:10Speaker 1: news of the unidentified victim fizzled out, but investigators continued
- 23:15Speaker 1: to compare missing persons cases to her. Every time they did.
- 23:20Speaker 1: No matter how good the comparison looked, fingerprints or dental
- 23:24Speaker 1: charts ruled them out. Area killers and sexual predators were
- 23:29Speaker 1: heavily scrutinized, as were madmen outside the scope of Amarillo
- 23:34Speaker 1: and its counties simply for having similar methods of operation,
- 23:39Speaker 1: but none could be proven to have anything to do
- 23:42Speaker 1: with the unidentified victim. About seven and a half years
- 23:47Speaker 1: after the discovery, of Jane Doe's body. A headline appeared
- 23:51Speaker 1: in the Amarillo Globe Times. It read authorities seek help
- 23:56Speaker 1: identifying mourner at woman's grave site. The article went on
- 24:02Speaker 1: to describe a woman thought to be in her thirties
- 24:05Speaker 1: who had been leaving flowers at the grave of the
- 24:07Speaker 1: unidentified victim. On March first, nineteen ninety one, this woman
- 24:13Speaker 1: bought flowers and a vase at a local store. Two
- 24:17Speaker 1: similar sketches of the woman were produced from two different witnesses.
- 24:22Speaker 1: Presumably the woman came forward and was simply a resident who,
- 24:26Speaker 1: out of respect and sympathy, wished to mourn Jane Doe
- 24:31Speaker 1: as she had no one else to. When nearly ten
- 24:35Speaker 1: years had passed. In the summer of nineteen ninety three,
- 24:38Speaker 1: Amarillo Police Sergeant Modena Holmes commented that every December thirty first,
- 24:44Speaker 1: she makes a New Year's resolution that she will identify
- 24:47Speaker 1: her Jane Doe. Year after year, the resolution was never realized.
- 24:54Speaker 1: Sergeant Holmes was sure the victim wasn't local. At this point, too,
- 24:59Speaker 1: frustration had not waned. There was a virtually automatic Crimestoppers
- 25:04Speaker 1: reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of
- 25:08Speaker 1: someone's killer. Or killers, but nothing to persuade someone to
- 25:12Speaker 1: come forward and help identify an unidentified murder victim. Sergeant
- 25:18Speaker 1: Holmes spoke of the need for a national system to
- 25:20Speaker 1: get the photos or sketches of unidentified people in front
- 25:24Speaker 1: of the public, something similar to the faces of missing
- 25:28Speaker 1: children on milk cartons or on mail flyers. What if,
- 25:32Speaker 1: the investigator wondered, Jane Doe's loved ones had no reason
- 25:37Speaker 1: to think harm had come to her and she was
- 25:39Speaker 1: never reported missing, or if the police agency handling the
- 25:43Speaker 1: missing person's case, for whatever reason, wasn't attempting to locate
- 25:48Speaker 1: her the ways they should. After comparing approximately sixty five
- 25:53Speaker 1: hundred missing girls and women whose descriptions even came close
- 25:58Speaker 1: with absolutely no love, the case remained frustrating. Ten years on.
- 26:05Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, West Texas A and M University
- 26:09Speaker 1: biology professor doctor Chip Poulowitch and a handful of students
- 26:14Speaker 1: began taking on the case, hopeful they could both identify
- 26:18Speaker 1: Jane Doe and solve her murder. Equipped with little more
- 26:22Speaker 1: than autopsy photos and a full body X ray, the
- 26:26Speaker 1: students were working with a computer to do facial reconstructions,
- 26:30Speaker 1: a relatively new process at the time. By two thousand
- 26:35Speaker 1: and six, the case file had grown to encompass two
- 26:38Speaker 1: full filing cabinets. Hope Amarillo Jane Doe would ever be
- 26:42Speaker 1: identified was depleting. Sergeant Modena Holmes had retired, leaving her
- 26:49Speaker 1: life's work behind, though not in her mind. Just three
- 26:55Speaker 1: years later, an internet sleuth made a connection when the
- 26:58Speaker 1: brother of a missing teenage renewed his search that and
- 27:03Speaker 1: potential suspects. Next time on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime.
- 27:09Speaker 1: If you'd like more information about doctor Ralph Erdman and
- 27:12Speaker 1: why some of his determinations in this case should not
- 27:16Speaker 1: necessarily be taken as gospel, check out our episodes titled
- 27:20Speaker 1: Deborah Mackie Part one, Plane View Jane Doe and Part
- 27:24Speaker 1: two The Criminal Pathologist from September twenty twenty three. Those
- 27:29Speaker 1: episodes should convince you. If you have any information about
- 27:35Speaker 1: the murder of Bambi Lynn Dick, please call the Amarillo
- 27:38Speaker 1: Potter Randall Special Crimes Unit at eight zero six three
- 27:43Speaker 1: seven eight four two six ' eight. I'd like to
- 27:47Speaker 1: take a moment to thank some of our Patreon members
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