October 10, 2004
By: By Marissa Yaremich , Register Staff
New Haven Register

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a series of stories on unsolved deaths. These cold cases remain under investigation, waiting for a clue that could unlock the past and ease families’ grief.

She left this world in a pauper’s casket with no name and an unmarked grave — far less, some say, than she deserved.

While nearby family plots radiate with colorful blossoms and telltale tombstones, her barren plot rests in the shadows of Hamden’s State Street Cemetery alongside a rusty chain-link fence and a clump of crabgrass.

"I get calls all the time for (unidentified) people who died in the 1970s to put in a stone for them," said the cemetery’s caretaker, Randy Guevin. But no one, he said, ever calls to identify this woman, known to East Haven police as Jane Doe.

The woman’s strangled body was found by a truck driver on a rainy Aug. 16, 1975, floating in a drainage ditch behind the former Bradlees department store on Frontage Road. She was wrapped in a canvas tarpaulin and she was gagged and bound by black antenna wire around her neck, waist and knees. With little evidence to go on except her physical features and the facts of her discovery, authorities have spent the past three decades baffled by the mystery woman.

"Obviously, nobody ever missed her because they never took the time to report her missing," Police Sgt. Robert Flodquist said. Regardless, police said they are determined to put a name, aside from Jane Doe, at the top of the slim manila envelope containing her entire case history in hopes of piecing together her story and nabbing her killer.

"It’s a very difficult case," Flodquist said. "In most homicides, you know the victim and are (only) searching for the murderer." At the time of her death, however, police were unable immediately to pinpoint her identity because of the nonexistence of DNA testing and any fingerprint records belonging to her. The white, 20-something’s dental chart, which showed probable orthodontic care, also proved fruitless, since it did not match any of those contained in the dozens of missing person reports that poured in from police departments nationwide. The possibility that she had plastic surgery on her nose may also have thrown off anyone who knew her natural facial features. The absence of a driver’s license solidified her anonymity. As a result, police have spent the last 29 years "working backward" in an attempt to determine Jane Doe’s personality, hometown and acquaintances.

Her murderer left police with slim evidence at the scene. Police believe she was killed somewhere else and dumped on Frontage Road. No fingerprints. No footprints. Not even a single eyelash was left behind. Only dried white paint spots on the tarpaulin, Flodquist noted, might indicate the murderer had connections with the painting trade.

Police still ponder varied versions of how the 125-pound woman’s 5-foot 6-inch body wound up in a 2-foot-deep open culvert. "The odds are against us, but we have a lot of confidence and … hope we’ll be able to solve it," Flodquist said. Some police officers, including Flodquist, have speculated that the hazel-eyed brunette was a transient and possibly dumped in the shopping plaza by someone in a vehicle that could quickly flee on nearby Interstate 95. Other police sources said her bundled body may have been "stuffed inside a 30-inch drain pipe upstream of the drainage ditch," which heavy rains later washed down the small river. Still others wondered if she fell victim to a gangland killing.

Just two weeks before her body was found, authorities discovered a convicted bookkeeper floating in the Quinnipiac River, wrapped in a sleeping bag tied with chains and ropes. Despite all the possibilities, no leads ever verified the hypotheses. Only her cause of death remains certain. As indicated in an autopsy report, Jane Doe died of asphyxiation by suffocation at least five days before the truck driver’s chance encounter. Mostly, police have been at the mercy of others to provide any new leads, which Flodquist said have been sporadic at best.

According to Inspector Guy Nappi, who has been with the department for 37 years, the department’s most promising lead regarding the suspect’s potential identity surfaced a couple of years ago. A serial killer in a Maine jail who was known for killing women and roaming Vermont, Connecticut and New Hampshire sparked local authorities’ attention. "He alluded to being in the Greater New Haven area (around the time of Doe’s death), and he mentioned something about being in a shopping area," said Nappi. But police eventually considered it a dead end because he never admitted to murdering or harming anyone at that time. His conversation also "wasn’t too lucid," Nappi noted.

A sketch of the woman was submitted in the 1990s to The Doe Network Web site (www.doenetwork.org).

The site assists law enforcement in North America, Australia and Europe to solve cold cases by featuring photos and information regarding unidentified and missing persons. In late July, one Web surfer who viewed the local composite rejuvenated police hope, said Flodquist.

The unidentified tipster told police the woman resembled a Bell telephone co-worker of hers in the 1970s and provided an undisclosed name. However, police were unable to locate the named person’s family and have since lost hope it will result in some answers. Until they find otherwise, Guevin said Jane Doe will always have a home at the Hamden cemetery where her remains are cared for.

If anyone has information about this case, contact the East Haven detective division at 468-3827. All tips can remain anonymous.