St. Louis Jane Doe

Investigation

Initial findings It was concluded by law enforcement that the victim was not killed at the location where she was discovered, as no traces of blood were found by the body. This led law enforcement to believe blood had been drained from her body elsewhere; her stomach was also empty at the time of her death. She wore only a yellow, long sleeved V-neck sweater and two coats of nail polish on her fingers – one being red and the other purple. Her head has never been found, but fingerprints, footprints and DNA information were successfully collected. There were no distinct marks or deformities on her body. She had been between and tall in life. Ten months after her discovery, with no new leads for investigators, she was buried at Washington Park Cemetery on December 2, 1983.

The child's sweater had previously been sent by law enforcement to a psychic in Florida who wanted to touch it to receive a psychic impression; however, the sweater was never returned, and is presumed to have been lost in the mail. She was also presumed to have been a victim of Vernon Brown, who had murdered a young girl in a similar manner. Brown was executed in 2005 and never confessed to murdering the Jane Doe, despite efforts made by investigators. The remains were located by using camera calibration techniques to determine precisely where a photograph of the casket had been taken on the day of the burial.

Isotope tests on samples of her bones were undertaken to determine the area the victim would have likely lived based on mineral content in her body. According to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the test results concluded the girl was likely to have lived her entire life in one of ten southeastern states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, or North or South Carolina.

After the exhumation, the remains were re-interred at Calvary Cemetery in the Garden of Innocents, a section of the cemetery designated for unidentified or abandoned child decedents.

2022 documentary A documentary on the case entitled Our Precious Hope Revisited: St. Louis' Little Jane Doe was released in September 2022.