I live in Dallas County, Texas. I write about unidentified victims, missing persons, cold cases, forensics, and victim assistance information in Texas. For more true crime cases in the United States, visit armchairdetectives.org.
What kind of person can murder a young girl, put her body in a garbage bag, and dump her off the side of a Texas highway?
For these three different cases where female bodies were found in trash bags tossed into ditches and fields, all we have are their skeletal remains. And the stories their bones tell us about their last moments on this earth.
October 29, 1981 - Grimes County Jane Doe
A highway worker discovered a garbage bag of human bones off the FM 244 highway in Iola, Texas. Inside, investigators found the skeletal remains of a white girl with auburn hair. The only clues left behind with her were a pair of pink panties, a white towel, a mechanic's drop cloth, and a ring made from a replica $20 Saint-Gaudens double eagle coin.
The medical examiner's autopsy revealed that the girl died from blunt force trauma to the head.
The ME also discovered the girl had extensive dental work, including 13 fillings, and she had healed rib, breastbone, and toe fractures. The rest of the information is educated guesswork: She was thirteen to nineteen years old, likely a few inches over five feet tall, and may have weighed 110 pounds.
And there's one more grim detail: she was likely kept in a cool, dry place for one to five years after her death. Where was she located before her killer tossed the garbage bag filled with her bones into the ten foot ditch next to FM 244?
For now, her home is Grimes County, Texas, and her caretakers are the investigators from the Grimes County Sheriff's Criminal Investigation Department.
DNA was obtained from the Grimes County Jane Doe and uploaded into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), but no matches have been made. If you have any information about this cold case homicide or wish to submit your DNA, please contact Grimes County Sheriff's Office at (936) 873-2151.
October 16, 2012 - Harris County Jane Doe
On October 16, 2012, a motorist stopped on the side of Walters Road, in Houston, Texas. The motorist discovered a black garbage bag that contained the body of a teenage girl, between fifteen and seventeen years old. The bag was adjacent to a gated driveway approximately 20-25 feet from the side of Walters Road, near the Fallbrook Church.
The girl wore a blue-green short sleeve tee-shirt (no size). On the front was the cartoon character Smurfette with a daisy and the words, "He Smurfs Me, He Smurfs Me Not." She also wore a pair of tan cargo pants (size 5). Her underclothes consisted of a black bra (34C) and pink panties. Because of her shirt, the girl became known as the Smurfette Doe. She also had long curly black-brown hair and could be biracial (Black and white).
The medical examiner estimated that Smurfette Doe had been dead for three to six weeks. While the manner of death could not be determined, the ME concluded she died as the result of a homicide given the attempt to hide the body.
International Identifinders has the girl's DNA and is working with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences to find out who Smurfette Doe is.
If you have any information about the Smurfette Doe, please contact the Harris County Sheriff's Department at (713) 221-6000.
September 16, 2016 - Madison County Jane Doe
On September 17, 2016, a man mowing his pasture in the 7800 block of I-45's southbound feeder road near Madisonville, Texas plowed into a black suitcase. Seeking identification, he opened the bag. Tucked inside were three white trash bags, and inside those bags were the remains of a young girl.
The little girl, between the ages of two and six, wore a size 4T “Mon Petit” pink dress decorated with hearts and butterflies and the phrase "Follow Your Dreams." Also found with her were a Mic-Key 14 FR 1.2 cm feeding tube and “Parent’s Choice” (Walmart brand) size 4 diaper. Nearby, investigators also discovered a child’s silver bedspread, military-issued camouflage shirt (desert digital pattern), a pair of socks (color and size unknown), adult gray sweatshirt, and a small green blanket.
The small size of the girl’s jaw indicated a condition called micrognathia. Children with this condition have a problem eating, and was probably why she had a feeding tube. Her skull was deformed and flattened on one side.
The medical examiner concluded that the little girl's death was a homicide.
DNA was obtained from the Madison County Jane Doe. Identifinders International has been using forensic genealogical research to track down relatives, but matches found so far are not enough to make a definitive tie to the little girl's family line. They have determined the little girl has white, Latino, and Native American genetics.
If you have any information about the Madison County Jane Doe, please contact the Madison County Sheriff’s Office at 936–348–2755.
I live in Dallas County, Texas. I write about unidentified victims, missing persons, cold cases, forensics, and victim assistance information in Texas. For more true crime cases in the United States, visit armchairdetectives.org.
On January 13, 1996, nine-year-old Amber and her five-year-old brother, Ricky, visited their grandparents with their mother, Donna, in Arlington, Texas. Winter weather in the Lone Star State is often fickle--ranging from warm and sunny one day to freezing and rainy the next. This particular afternoon offered cloudless blue skies and temps in the seventies. Amber and Ricky wanted to ride their bikes. Donna told her kids to stay on the block.
On October 29, 1981, a local highway worker stopped to pick up a garbage bag discarded in a 10-foot-deep ditch alongside FM 244 in Grimes County, Texas, near the town of Iola. The worker was stunned when a human skull rolled out.
On July 8, 1957, an unidentified deceased man was found floating face down in Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston, Texas. The nearest address to his location was the 1200 block of Commerce Street. The medical examiner estimated that Buffalo Bayou Doe died three days prior to being pulled out of the waterway, but the body was too decomposed for an autopsy. Cause of death is unknown.
A basic search in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) for unidentified persons found in Texas without torsos, limbs, or hands creates 225 results. That means there are 225 people who died--either through murder, self-harm, or accident. All that's left of them, of their stories, is their skulls.
Bones hold histories. Tell stories. Show truths. A skull can reveal a lot about a person, even if it's the only physical element left that proves they once existed as a living human being.
On January 31, 1990, a human skull was recovered in Crane County, Texas. Law enforcement believes the skull belongs to an Hispanic woman between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. They also estimated the woman died at least ten years before her skull was recovered.
Texas Rangers need your help with three 1980s cold case homicides that occurred in Houston, Corpus Christi, and Lubbock, Texas. Anyone who provides credible information that leads to the arrest of the killers can receive up to $3,000. To be eligible for the cash rewards, tipsters must call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477). All tips are anonymous, and tipsters will be provided a tip number to use as an identifier (instead of the tipster's name).
On December 14, 2002, fire fighters were called to the Sunset Terrace Apartments located in the 900 block of San Antonio Avenue in Seguin, Texas. After they extinguished the fire and searched what was left of the scorched apartment, they made a gruesome discovery in the bedroom: The charred remains of a female.
It's 2012. In a school bus abandoned in a North Texas field for the last forty years, film maker Josh Vargas is digging through the belongings of Elmer Wayne Henley, the subject of his current movie project. At the bottom of a moldy box, the director finds a sealed envelope. He opens it. A blurry Polaroid photograph falls out. The image? A handcuffed boy on his knees next to a large opened tool box.
On October 23, 1979, seven-year-old Elizabeth Barclay, her three-year-old brother, Scotty, and neighborhood friend, five-year-old J.R. Potter, left their apartment complex on Starlight Road to walk to a nearby store (different sources state they were going to a convenience or a grocery store). According to the Texas Rangers, who re-opened the decades-old unsolved murder case in 2019, Elizabeth was kidnapped in the area of 2900 West Northwest Highway in Dallas, Texas around 7 p.m.
On July 20, 1974, Janet Kay Baze, a 36-year-old mother of five, got into the family car with her husband of nineteen years, Sergeant Major Everett Neal Baze. Some reports indicated that the couple had a "heated argument" before leaving together.
On October 30, 1988, the body of a woman was found not far from Fairway Avenue in Dallas, Texas. She'd been strangled to death and left face down in a creek bed. By the time she was discovered, Fairway Jane Doe had been deceased for fifteen days.
On September 17, 2016, a man mowing his pasture in the 7800 block of I-45's southbound feeder road near Madisonville, Texas plowed into a black suitcase. Finding abandoned things in the high grass wasn't unusual, especially for an area so close to a well-traveled road.