Snohomish County Doe Soon To Be Identified or Another Dead End?
Update: This one was solved in the summer of 2020. Her name was Elizabeth Roberts.
Link good as of October 2020: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8463099/Girl-murdered-Washington-identified-43-years-later-DNA-taken-hair.html
The rule-out candidate that I submitted was ruled out.
"Hi Shane,
New South Wales PD’s forensic odontologist performed a dental comparison between our Jane Doe and Narelle Cox and ruled out a match based on dental records.
I hope you find your Narelle and we figure out who our Jane is! Thank you again,
Jane"
------------------------------------------------------------------------By: Shane Lambert (UncoolNegated on WebSleuths)
She was found dead on August 14th, 1977 - a couple of days before Elvis died - in Snohomish County, Washington. Her murderer was subsequently convicted, but he could not identify her. Her name has remained a mystery for what is almost forty years now.
However, a June 23rd, 2016 article from Komonews.com at least offers a little bit of hope that the Snohomish County Jane Doe, whose composite sketch appears below, might be named soon.
According to the article, which can be read here, an Australian phoned Washington state to offer a potential lead on who the Jane Doe sketched on the left might be. As of July 9th, those that follow missing persons cases are still in the dark.However, the Australian identity of the caller got me working. In looking over the missing persons at an Australian website, my guess would be that the decedent is Narelle Mary Cox, pictured to the right.
The details surrounding Cox's disappearance corroborate to a large extent with the Jane Doe. Firstly, Cox was 21 when she disappeared and that is within the hypothesized age range of the Jane Doe above.
Secondly, Cox was last seen in the months prior to the discovery of the decedent. One source, DoeNetwork.com, says that Cox has been "Missing since July 20, 1977" (my bolding/underlining). Another source, a news article from 2006 by Julia Iles, claims "whatever dreams Narelle Mary Cox had as she hitch-hiked from Grafton...were never realised. She has been missing ever since" (bolding/underlining added).
Her travel plans were ambiguous but maybe those "dreams" were to travel to America. It's the distance between Cox's last known location and the Jane Doe's location that will certainly cause many to dismiss a connection between the two.
On other matters, whether the face matches the composite sketch is a matter of opinion but certainly all will agree that there are some similarities. The parted hair matches, the skin color matches, and the shortness of the hair in the forehead area matches too. Those that attempt to match composite sketches to photos of unknown people will tell you that anything in the ballpark is worth looking at.
Another match is that the decedent was a hitch-hiker and, as per the quote above, so was Cox. Circumstantial? For sure. Axiomatic proof? Hardly.
It's important to stress that I'm not claiming that the composite sketch and Narelle Mary Cox are of one and the same person. That's an announcement that comes with stronger evidence that only law enforcement and coroner's can provide.
It's important to stress that I'm not claiming that the composite sketch and Narelle Mary Cox are of one and the same person. That's an announcement that comes with stronger evidence that only law enforcement and coroner's can provide.
However, when I read that someone from Australia had called the USA regarding the Snohomish County Jane Doe, I scoured through hours of Australian databases and news sources. Narelle Mary Cox is my guess based on her matching age, her matching look, her matching hitch-hiking tendencies, and the corroborating dates. Even if she isn't the one being looked at based on the Australian-caller lead, she's a candidate for a ruling out in my view.
That most that object will do so on grounds of how far apart Cox was, when last seen, from the resting place of the decedent is not something that bothers me at all. The amount of time that it has taken to identify the Jane Doe is actually a clue.
If the decedent was an American in life then she probably would have been matched to the Jane Doe already for cultural reasons. When a pretty, caucasian, and young 21 year old is killed in her home country, she so often gets identified because of the abundance of affiliated news coverage. Could be that trans-national travel is what has been the hold up in this case all along.
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September 2017: Additional photos of Narelle Mary Cox
That most that object will do so on grounds of how far apart Cox was, when last seen, from the resting place of the decedent is not something that bothers me at all. The amount of time that it has taken to identify the Jane Doe is actually a clue.
If the decedent was an American in life then she probably would have been matched to the Jane Doe already for cultural reasons. When a pretty, caucasian, and young 21 year old is killed in her home country, she so often gets identified because of the abundance of affiliated news coverage. Could be that trans-national travel is what has been the hold up in this case all along.
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September 2017: Additional photos of Narelle Mary Cox
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