She’s known to searchers as Jane Seneca Doe.
But now, she might have a few other names as clues. Calhoun. Harris.
For years, Grundy County, Illinois, Deputy Chief Coroner Brandon Johnson has been trying to find out what happened to a young woman found dumped in a ditch decades ago. Thought to be between 15 and 27 years old, the African American victim was found shot in the head off a highway in Seneca on Oct. 2, 1976.
By using DNA genealogy, Johnson has gathered some new leads. But he also faces more questions.
Through the help of genealogical researchers, Johnson knows her family might have been from Selma, Alabama, and surnames could have included Calhoun or Harris. One branch of the family lived in Ohio, another in Michigan.
And she may have had siblings who did not know she even existed.
In trying to find out more about her story decades after her death, the investigation has revealed just how little she may have been known in life.
“Nobody’s aware of her existence,” he said.
October marks 45 years since she was found in 1976 by a farmer and his daughter along a Seneca highway about an hour and a half southwest of Chicago. At the time, the Grundy County sheriff’s department investigated and determined she was killed elsewhere and brought to the field. A 1976 coroner’s report listed a bullet wound to the head, multiple skull fractures and estimated her age at about 20 years.
Genealogy has helped identify other victims, including the recent identification of Francis Wayne Alexander as a victim of murderer John Wayne Gacy. His body was one of the unidentified bodies found in Gacy’s crawl space; his family thought they had initiated a missing-person report but now realize that never happened.
Similar genealogical research helped snare the so-called Golden State killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, and in September identify the remains of a woman believed a victim of serial killer Samuel Little.
For years, Jane Seneca Doe’s bones had been kept in a cardboard box in the Morris coroner’s office, the only unidentified person in Grundy County. After exhuming the body in 2018, Johnson entered her information into unidentified persons databases and released an artist-rendered image to the public of what she may have looked like.
As a coroner, Johnson’s daily job includes juggling phone calls about burials or cremations and pamphlets about grief. But he’s had more conversations than he can count with mothers wondering if their daughter’s bones are in his office. Even a concrete, if disappointing, negative match has helped families finally file missing-person reports. People may not file these reports if they don’t realize they can, or assume someone left on their own.
“It’s disappointing that it’s not a match, but at the same time, these families were finally reporting their loved ones,” Johnson said.
The Tribune reported on efforts to exhume Jane Seneca Doe’s body and identify her two years ago, when Johnson was preparing to ship her mandible and femur to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.
Since then, researchers at the university developed a DNA profile for Jane Seneca Doe and entered it into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the FBI’s national database. No matches were found.
But right away, the DNA profile helped Johnson exclude people on his list of possible family matches. One was an elderly mother in Englewood. When Johnson and Grundy County Coroner John Callahan visited her home, they noticed how photos of her daughter might bear resemblance to their victim. The mother had remembered buying a similar sweater for her daughter to the one in which Jane Seneca Doe was found. But DNA from the family, compared to the victim’s bone DNA, did not match.
The coroner’s office also partnered with the DNA Doe Project, an all-volunteer organization that uses genealogical DNA to help identify people and whose research helped to identify the most recent Gacy victim.
Since adding her case, DNA Doe Project volunteers have worked to name her.
By uploading a profile of her DNA to GEDmatch, which allows people to submit their own profiles, DNA Doe Project workers sought people with shared DNA, identifying potential grandparents and great-grandparents and multiple people who may have been cousins or nieces or nephews. For privacy and logistical reasons, no national database exists that keeps all DNA submitted to places such as Ancestry.com, but users can choose to upload their profiles on sites such as GEDmatch, which can help others connect dots.
Jenny Lecus, an investigative genetic genealogist at the DNA Doe Project, said that cases are typically not as simple as plugging something into a database and finding an immediate match. Challenges include low matches results or broken families who do not know much about each other.
“It’s one of the more complicated cases just because we just had that one close match, and that has not led to an answer,” she said. “There are cases that we’ve solved in minutes or hours. This one has been over two years.”
In Jane Seneca Does’s case, Lecus found multiple matches. At first, it was exciting. “We lucked out,” she said, “in that we had a pretty close match right off the bat.”
That person shared enough DNA with Jane Seneca Doe to potentially be a first cousin. They talked to this woman, and some of her relatives. All were warm and helpful, she said, but couldn’t provide any useful information. No one had heard of anyone missing in their family, for example, or a presumed runaway.
“Nobody has any idea who our Jane Doe could be,” she said. She’s still looking at other possible relatives, checking for new matches every day. “It doesn’t matter how many hours it takes. There is no quit. There is no giving up. We’re going to find her name.”
Johnson, too, tried to reach out. Last fall, he punched in the phone numbers of potential relatives. This might, he thought after so many months, be the moment.
People were “caught off guard” to hear from an Illinois coroner call about a cold case, he said. Each person promised to ask their relatives. But Johnson never heard back.
This month, ahead of the October anniversary, he tried again. Nothing.
“I thought that we were really getting closer,” he said. “Sadly, I was mistaken.”
The Alexander identification is encouraging, he said. It proves families can be given answers, bodies given names. But he hopes his Jane Seneca Doe’s time is soon.
“It shows that there is hope, because those are victims like our victim, from the ‘70s,” he said.
For now, they are piecing together what puzzle parts they have. Her parents may have been from Selma, Alabama; one set of grandparents lived there, which they know by finding out about the grandparents of the possible first cousin. On that side, one grandparent’s last name was Calhoun, and his wife’s maiden name was Harris, so either names are possible connections to Jane Seneca Doe. She might have relatives in two counties in Alabama: Dallas County or Wilcox County. Johnson sent Jane Seneca Doe’s story to churches in the state, hoping a big congregation’s connections might glean more information. Alabama media covered the case’s family connections.
Details from 1976 include the red, black and white cardigan she was found with that had a bottle of T.J. Swann wine in the pocket. The autopsy suggested a scar on her right hip.
As leads surface more questions than answers, Johnson speculates Jane Seneca Doe might have been born out of wedlock or in a situation where her larger family wasn’t aware of her existence.
“We devoted so much time to this constant search,” he said. “It’s frustrating at times not to have the closure.
“We know more now than we ever knew before. I’m confident one day she’ll have her name back.”
The Grundy County coroner’s office is still seeking the public’s assistance to help identify Jane Seneca Doe. Her story has been featured on cold case podcasts; Johnson has also consulted with Cook County sheriff’s police Lt. Jason Moran, lead investigator in the unnamed Gacy cases. Johnson gets regular phone calls and emails from people with tips, ranging from suggesting the slaying followed a movie storyline to whether she was a victim of Little, a possibility he and other investigators considered and closed.
If she were alive, Jane Seneca Doe could have been in her 60s. By now, the killer or killers might be dead. Justice is a goal. But first, Johnson hopes for a proper service to remember her.
Until then, her bones remain in the coroner’s office cooler.
“She’s still here, in our care,” he said.
