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- They are known as jane and john does.
40,000 murder victims are still unidentified.
[gentle music]
Thousands of suspects are still at large.
I'm on a mission to change all of that,
One case at a time.
Who is she?
- Hunters discovered the mystery woman's remains
Back in 1996.
- Investigators want to get this woman back to her family.
- For 23 years, polk county's jane doe has remained unknown.
Her family left wondering, what happened?
Until now.
For nearly three decades, I worked as a csi,
Specializing in the recovery of dna.
I'm hoping with the advances in dna testing,
We can get closer to tracking down her family
And her identity.
- In the underwear, there was a semen stain.
- She's not just another jane doe.
She's a person with a story.
- My focus has always been the victims
And the victim's family.
She deserves her identity back,
And I'm gonna work for that.
[dramatic music]
[indistinct chatter]
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- I'm yolanda mcclary,
A retired crime scene investigator
From the las vegas metropolitan police department.
I've helped to reopen and solve some of the most complex
And mysterious cold cases in america.
Polk county's jane doe cold case
Has been haunting the local sheriff's department
For nearly 25 years.
I can only imagine how jane doe's family must feel.
They still have no idea what happened to their mother,
Wife, or sister.
Thinking of my own family,
Not knowing would be so painful.
Murdered, discarded in a wooded area.
Jane doe has been at the oregon state forensic lab
For over two decades.
I want to give her her name back.
Using genealogy to help identify unidentified persons
Has been a huge breakthrough.
My hope is that it will lead us down the right path
For her identification.
- In September of 1996, a father and son hunting party
Stumbled upon a skeletonized body
Wrapped in a blue tarp,
Up with ropes,
And called the sheriff's office.
Based on the wide pelvis,
The medical examiner determined the body was female.
But dna technology in 1996 prevented us
From identifying her any more specifically.
This is burney krauger.
He's a retired detective,
And this case was his initially in '96.
- Hi burney, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
- Obviously, trying to find her identity
Is gonna be the huge thing to open up roads
On maybe a different kind of investigation.
- Burney krauger, he kept the case
Until he retired in December 2013,
And I took over the case at that point.
- So on September 1, 1996, you're on patrol?
- Correct. - Tell me about that.
- Well, I made contact with the father and the son,
And they told me they were grouse hunting
And the dad said he came into a clearing,
And there appeared to be a human skull
Sitting in this clearing.
From that point on then,
We started the investigation of the dead body.
The body was dumped and was wrapped in blue tarp.
It had been there long enough that the coyotes or varmints
Pulled the body out of the tarp.
♪ ♪
- Okay, well, that makes sense.
Got a lot of animals out and they're all feeding.
- Right.
- I chose this case
Because this victim was discarded like trash,
For animals to eat her remains.
No one, no one deserves to die that way.
- The oregon medical examiner's office
Did an autopsy on the bones,
And they were unable to determine the cause of death
Because they didn't find any knife wounds in the ribs,
They didn't find any bullet holes, et cetera, so...
- Okay. If you don't mind,
I would love to get a feel for where this was,
You know, at least an approximate area.
So it would be okay if we go out there?
- Yeah, we can do that. All right.
- In order for me to better understand
What happened to her,
I need to visit the place where she was found.
Retracing the actual steps of the killer
Can reveal insights into the crime
That a report just can't provide.
[suspenseful music]
- At the time in 1996,
The location was a recently cleared logging area.
- I don't know, if I was just some person
That was finding a place to dump a body,
I don't know that I could find this.
- Well, in my opinion, I think it would be kind of difficult.
They would have to be somewhat familiar with the area.
- There are hundreds of logging roads in this county.
You can get lost pretty easily up there.
♪ ♪
- Now this is the end of the log landing.
♪ ♪
I didn't realize it'd be grown up this much.
- Yeah, it's-- - it's grown up a lot.
- I think we went over someplace in that area
'cause I can remember that one stump being here.
- That's probably where we need to go down.
- Pretty close.
- What kind of person would come all the way up here
To dump a body?
I got to tell you, dragging a body down here--
It's steep, so I'm gonna say, whoever this is, is--
I'm not saying you have to be an athlete,
But you have to be at least--
- Kind of good shape. - Yeah.
- There's some fallen logs. Let's take a look at that.
Looking at the photos, this is where the body was.
- We're lucky she was ever found.
I mean, I don't know why, but I'm just feeling that.
- I am too.
They actually found the skull a couple hundred feet that way.
- Eventually a tarp would have been found,
And that would have been it. - Yeah.
- I don't think there would've been anything else left.
I don't think they would've found any of those bones.
That would've just been gone. - Yeah.
From the landing to where the body was, partway down,
Hidden under a small tree,
Was this bag of clothing.
Well, that clothing that was found
Was actually just up the hill, right up in there.
It was a pair of pants, pair of underwear,
Shirt, socks, shoes.
34/34 pants, so it's belonged to a tall person.
- Is it possible the killer changed,
Then discarded his clothes after he dumped the body,
Believing they would never be found?
- That was significant.
It was likely a male,
Tied to the person who put the body there.
Size 34/34 pants, it's likely someone over 6-foot tall.
- Did you guys ever have any clothing
Or the evidence tested?
- Yeah, actually in the underwear
That was in the bag, there was a semen stain.
They tried to develop the dna from that stain,
And they had no luck in '96. - Okay.
- They stored the sample that they created.
- I'm super impressed and happy
That we had a possible perp dna profile.
- Finally in 2014, I said,
"let's take another crack at it."
At that point they were actually able to get
A partial dna from one of the samples,
And it was good enough to go into codis.
♪ ♪
- That's a really good sample if it was good enough
To go into codis. - Yeah, so.
But unfortunately, we've not had any hits from that.
- Still nothing.
- On one of the trees,
There was a clump of brownish colored hair.
♪ ♪
Like, you whack your head on a tree
And it takes part of your skin off.
- Brown hair?
It was caught in a broken branch
Above where the body was.
We think whoever, disposing of the body
And then they raised up, that they caught that--
- That branch. - Chunk.
Whoever did it must have felt it.
- Well, that was significant 'cause it didn't match her hair
And it points to the person who drug her down there.
Now we're having it looked at again.
- If we can get a usable dna profile,
It could possibly open up roads we would never have before.
It's such a huge deal because
I want to give her her name back.
I want to target her killer.
That could be a game changer.
- Her dad was a loser.
- He was playing chicken on the railroad track.
- I tried to talk her out of it.
- It's very shocking.
Almost like an out-of-body experience.
[indistinct chatter]
[light dramatic music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[birds cawing]
- The discarded remains of a woman
We call jane doe are found by hunters
Nearly 25 years ago in polk county, oregon.
♪ ♪
I'm headed to the oregon state forensic lab
To meet with nici vance, their state anthropologist.
It's amazing how much information bones can tell us.
How old our victim is, if they ever had a child,
How tall they were possibly.
- We've tried so many things on this particular jane doe.
So she's right here.
- So you said you have the majority of her?
- I do.
But we just can't seem to identify her.
I'm gonna lay her out in anatomical position.
- Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
- So you can see exactly what we have.
- Oh, my goodness. - Isn't that amazing?
- Now that is really a weird scar.
- Yeah, so this is definitely a craniotomy scar, so--
- Surgery. - Surgery, yes.
This is not an injury.
There's part of her spinal column.
- Uh-huh. - That would indicate
That she hadn't necessarily been out there all that long.
- Uh huh. She seems small.
- I don't think she's over 5'3", 5'4".
We know she's female based on characteristics
In her skeletal system.
We see a very, very wide pelvis.
- Can you tell if somebody's had children, given childbirth?
- Yeah, there's a little divot right there,
A little depression that is created
When a very large ligament detaches during childbirth.
We see indication that she very well
Could have been a mother.
- As a mother, this kind of hits home.
When I found out that jane doe had at least one child,
I'm wondering if that child
Has been looking for her all these years.
- We know that she's past her 30s.
We're now moving into probably the fourth decade of life.
- Into her 40s. - Mm-hmm.
- Got it. - Exactly.
- Did you find any kind of cause of death?
- We don't have soft tissue, so we don't see a bullet wound.
We've looked, there there's no knife defects.
So everything--
- No blunt force trauma there. - Exactly right.
So we would see that depression in the bone.
Don't see it here,
So we have virtually no indication
Regarding how she came to die, yeah.
- How she died, okay.
- The cause of death based on the bones is not clear,
But unfortunately the manner of death
Or why she died is still homicide
Since she clearly didn't wrap herself up
In a tarp on that hill.
So we're down to dna.
Other than that, there's just not a lot.
- I lose sleep over this case because she's so identifiable.
I want to believe that someone's looking for her.
Let's give her back to her family.
So if there's some sort of new technology
That you can help us with, let's see what we can find out.
- I'm hoping with the advances in dna testing,
We can now collect her dna from just her bones.
We don't know the cause of death.
But what I do know
Is that jane doe has at least one child
Who may still be alive.
So there must be family out there looking for her.
Imagine all these years looking for someone you loved.
It's heartbreaking.
Now I need to speak with the detectives.
If detectives can determine
When jane doe's remains were dumped,
It could help us find out who she might be.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
All right, let's talk about evidence a little bit.
And the time frame, the time of year.
- We put a time period in there of late June to the middle,
Maybe even two-thirds July
Because of what the vegetation shows you.
Grass played an important part
In determining approximate time
Of the body being deposited there.
- Burney collected grass
From next to where the body was,
And grass from under where the body was.
The difference in height between these two grasses
Indicates that she was there two to three months.
- And then we also found a receipt
And some clothes that were up there.
- In the shirt pocket of one of the shirts
That was in this bag was a restaurant receipt.
It was for around $5 worth of food for one person.
This fast food receipt was dated June 26th.
- Okay, that's very interesting.
So you have two things now saying probably late June.
- Yeah. - I think your timeline's good.
I think your timelines probably right on.
- So we know when the killer likely dumped
His clothes and the body,
But we still need to identify our victim.
Dr. Vance has been very helpful so I was picking her brain,
I'm like, "what else can we do?"
She's like, "I got somebody that can do you a sketch."
So in 2014, dr. Vance provided the skull
To a forensic artist,
And it was remarkable what came back.
A forensic artist can approximate a person's face
Based only on the contours of the skull.
For the first time,
I was looking into the face of jane doe.
We got those beautiful sketches,
And they experimented
With different hairstyles, hair colors
To give us a range of what our doe would have looked like.
- Once detectives had three potential sketches
Of their victim,
They turned to the media to generate leads.
- Investigators want to get this woman back to her family,
But they have no idea who she is or where she's from.
If you think you might know who this mystery woman is,
You're asked to contact the polk county sheriff's office.
- We were able to get a variety of sketches
Based on the skull of what our victim might have looked like.
- Yeah.
- And I did get a call from canada.
They had a missing person up there.
Turned out it wasn't-- wasn't ours.
That's the only serious tip that has come in.
Kind of been disappointing.
- Well, and after 23 years
If you haven't even found any good leads,
They're just probably not there anymore.
Times have changed, you know, in how we can do things now.
This is a great case to try just genealogy.
It's not like anything else
That dna has ever been used for.
It's new to me, too.
Dna solutions in oklahoma, private lab,
They'll try to extract the dna.
Doing this whole different profile
That can be uploaded into open source databases.
Then, you know, you start building trees,
And these trees have to connect,
And they keep connecting and connecting and connecting
Till finally, hopefully, they all can come together,
And hopefully right down to your jane doe.
I'm determined to help detectives
Identify their jane doe.
If my team can extract a solid sample of dna
From jane doe's bones,
We can then compare it to dna in public source databases,
In the hopes that any of her relatives' dna are in there.
It's a lot of work, but I got a great team.
- We thank you.
We really don't have anywhere else to go.
It's amazing 'cause this new technology could be
Just what we're looking for to solve this case.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- With this groundbreaking forensic technology,
We have a new tool to help solve cold cases.
Our jane doe's bones are sent to dna solutions,
A highly-respected, private lab in oklahoma.
- I'm dr. Anstead. I'm the lab director.
We're a laboratory that handles
A number of different kinds of dna work.
They've been extracting dna from skeletal remains
For quite a few years now, but what's changed
Is the technology to actually recover that dna...
[light dramatic music]
- I can't believe after more than two decades
After our jane doe's remains were found,
We had her dna profile.
The dna in this case was a bit challenging
Because there had been some degration level in the bone
Due to the fact that the bone is 23 years old,
But we're quite pleased with after two extractions,
We got what we want.
Finally, we are getting closer to tracking down her family
And her identity.
Now from my hometown in las vegas,
I contacted two of the best genealogists in the country.
[energetic music]
- My name is charles mcgee.
I do all sorts of different kinds of genealogical research,
With my main focus being forensic genealogy.
- This kind of investigative work is very different
Than just genealogy,
Because we start with an unknown.
We have no clue who this person is.
- I can't thank you guys enough for coming.
I just got back from oregon.
They had a body that was found September 1, 1996.
Our jane doe would have been in her 40s.
- And did she have children? - She had at least one child,
But possibly more.
- With a viable dna profile, we're able to upload that
To a private genetic dna database.
Once we're able to show matches to our jane doe,
Genetic matches, obviously we're hoping for a bull's-eye.
- What's a bull's-eye?
- Well, like a parent relationship would be awesome.
- Okay.
- The more dna that you share with somebody,
The closer your relationship.
So a paternal line and a maternal line coming together,
Beneath there, somewhere, is gonna be our doe, hopefully.
- Gotcha.
- We can't expect to get a parent
Or a sibling bull's-eye right off the bat.
I mean, we're always hoping for something like that,
But that's pretty rare.
Then you get down to second, third, fourth cousins
And removed cousins and half cousins.
- Lots of headaches. - We have tools--
We have all sorts of tools that can help us
Try to determine what those relationships might be.
- Okay.
- So we can kind of narrow the field.
Once her dna is uploaded to this genetic
Genealogy research site we use,
We're able to see our jane doe's top matches,
Her closest relatives.
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- I got the top ten matches that you sent.
- Yep, the dna was uploaded to the database
And matches for our jane doe are listed there.
We were hoping for something better, obviously.
Our jane doe matches are so distantly related
That she likely never even knew them during her life.
That makes the research pretty difficult.
- I liken this process to working a jigsaw puzzle.
When you get a list of matches,
Some of them are valuable, some of them are not,
But you don't know until you get going.
You're just flying blind.
- So we'll start out with the anna adams tree.
- Yes.
- You can begin working on that, jean.
I can take the sam smith tree.
And yolanda, you can start on dt jones.
And we can just keep on progressing from there.
- All right.
So now we have our top ten matches to our jane doe.
That means building out ten different family trees
That will have thousands of people in each,
To ultimately find that marriage
Between jane doe's mother and father to lead us to her.
- Somewhere there's a marriage that occurred
That produced the parent or grandparent of the doe.
- We're looking for the crossover
When one person in this tree marries somebody in this tree.
- Where they come together is where our doe's gonna be.
- All right, everybody divide and conquer.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
Based on our genealogy research,
The two common names that we have
In our tree are thomas and fuller.
So chuck, you found some crossovers, some marriages.
- Yeah, one of our matches is related to tennie fuller,
And the other is related to claude thomas.
And we found a crossover
Because claude and tennie married.
- So how does, ultimately, our doe fit into this?
- Our doe could actually be the child of tennie and claude,
Or it could be the grandchild.
Claude and tennie had seven children,
Six boys and one girl.
Morgan and leo were the oldest.
Billy and bettie were the youngest.
And bettie thomas, we believe that she moved to oregon.
- Wow.
- So that's a big hit right there.
Bettie was born in 1934.
- We're looking for somebody in their late 40s, maybe 50s.
She's a little older
Than probably what we want for our doe, right?
- Yeah.
- Bettie would've been 62 when jane doe was murdered,
Nearly 20 years her senior.
So she may not be our victim.
We needed detective williams' help.
[energetic music]
- So looking into bettie's background,
I found something that I didn't expect.
She had passed away in king county, washington,
In October of '96,
Four months after our doe was likely killed.
So obviously, it couldn't be our doe.
- So bettie's deceased and actually had a funeral.
It's not her.
- Bettie's out.
- We know she had four daughters,
But they're all accounted for.
- So it has to be the daughter
Of one of those remaining siblings.
- So we have six boys that we need to figure out
Who they're married to and every one of their kids.
Their kids would be born in the right time frame
Of the 1950s.
I guess everybody, let's hit our computers,
See what we can find, find phone numbers,
Maybe we just need to start talking
To some of these people too if they're alive.
This is the biggest lead in over two decades.
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
- So we have six boys
That we need to figure out who they're married to
And every one of their kids.
- Right. - So it has to be the daughter
Of one of those remaining siblings.
- Starting out, morgan is the first boy.
Second boy is leo.
- Leo. Robert.
- Billy.
- And they're all still oklahoma-based?
- Well, we don't know that for sure.
We're going to have to begin to, you know,
Fill that out, fill that information.
- All right, well then,
Let's do some more research on all of them.
I guess everybody, let's hit our computers,
See what we can find, find phone numbers,
Maybe we need to start talking to some of these people too
If they're alive.
- Yeah. - Okay.
- We methodically went through the siblings,
Starting with his oldest and working down,
And trying to figure out,
You know, who they would have been married to.
And if any of them had a daughter,
That could be our jane doe.
We couldn't get anywhere.
But lo and behold, weeks later we discovered
Billy thomas, bettie's brother,
The only living sibling.
- This whole line of siblings and only one of them
Was still living, and that was billy.
He's now 85 years old, in oklahoma.
[line ringing]
- Hey, is this billy?
- This is detective williams from oregon.
How are you doing?
- Hoping that he could fill in some of the holes,
I asked billy about his nieces and nephews.
- We just had a conversation, you know,
And he said that he's working on this case.
I gave him what I knew.
I've got five brothers, I'm the sixth.
Leo was my second oldest brother.
Him and his wife had three daughters.
- Billy said none of his other brothers had daughters,
But leo had three girls with jessie, his wife.
- I don't know how he met her or anything.
All I can tell you is they had sandra, linda, and kathy.
- All he knew were first names.
He hadn't seen them since they were little kids,
So knowing that leo and jessie had three girls
Born in about the right time in the 50s,
I'm almost certain that one of them is our doe.
♪ ♪
- Billy said the girls were split up
After his brother leo and jessie divorced around 1959.
Here in oklahoma.
About five miles from town.
- Then billy told us something that blew this case wide open.
- Leo took kathy to oregon.
- This is big.
It's the same state where our jane doe was found.
She's the right age.
She lived not far from where our victim's body was found.
And her two sisters are alive, living in the midwest.
Kathy is the best chance at being our jane doe.
- And I said "well, what do you think happened to kathy?"
- Leo adopted her out to a family
With the last name of buxton.
He said, "I don't how to spell it.
I don't know where they live. That's just what I heard."
So I have a name, buxton,
And now I got to figure out who linda and sandra are.
How can I do that?
I'm like okay, leo died in 1966,
But jessie, I knew she died in okemah, oklahoma.
Called the little newspaper there,
Asked them if they had an obituary from 2002.
A relative told me that linda and sandra were adopted out
To a local family in okemah because jessie, their mom,
Wanted to continue her party lifestyle,
And the two little girls were kind of in her way.
The same relative was very helpful, pointed me to linda,
Kathy's sister,
And actually helped me get linda on the phone.
[line ringing]
- Hey linda, this is detective williams from oregon.
How are you doing?
- Good.
- He said, "was your dad named leo?"
I said yes.
"did you have a younger sister named kathy?"
I said yes.
He said that they had a woman tied in a tarp.
He wanted to know if it could have been my sister.
My dad took off with her to oregon
Once that sandy and I got adopted to the same family.
And I didn't know what had happened to kathy.
She was just gone my whole life.
- I know you've wondered for years, where's kathy?
- She tells me sandra, her eldest sister,
Is a nurse at a hospital in oklahoma.
So I'm like, well, no one's seen kathy?
That fits the puzzle.
Kathy is likely our doe,
But we still need to confirm it.
And I said, could we get a dna sample to see
If we're on the right track?
- And I said, "yes, I'll do anything I can
To find out if it was my sister or not."
- Yeah.
- Well, will it also give you some kind of sense
Of "now you know"?
- That dna sample,
That's gonna be the truth one way or another.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- After months of research,
My team and I have narrowed down
Jane doe's genealogy to one family.
We believe linda amsler may be her sister.
We won't know for sure until we compare linda's dna
To our victim's dna.
[dramatic music]
- She was just drinking and running around.
- Never heard from her again.
Didn't know the husband's name other than a nickname.
- I seen her one time.
I stopped in this little bar there and she was there.
- I know that linda needed to hear the truth,
But it was very difficult to break the news to her.
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- We sent linda's dna to dna solutions
To have a compared with our victim,
Our doe's dna.
♪ ♪
Now we know for sure who our jane doe is.
It's linda's sister, kathy.
Now that we have the results,
Detective williams and I are heading to oklahoma
To break the news to linda in person.
Hopefully, linda can lead us to who saw kathy last,
And then ultimately to her killer.
So linda, thank you for meeting us.
I know from the first day that we called you
And talked to you, this has been
Kind of an emotional roller coaster for you.
- Mm-hmm.
- Thank you for working with us.
I know getting a phone call out of the blue about your sister--
- Like you said, out of nowhere, too.
- I know, and it was out of nowhere,
And you did something very special.
You gave me your dna.
I know that linda needed to hear the truth,
But it was very difficult to break the news to her.
So we do know, um...
You are a match. You are her sister.
- I knew it.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- The dna definitely confirms
That our person that we have is your biological sister.
♪ ♪
- I knew it was, in my heart.
By looking at her picture.
We all have this nose.
I didn't really want it to be her.
I wanted a family when I was young, so bad.
And now to finally get it, but she's gone.
And I'll never have my sister back.
It would have been nice if we'd had a real family
Like everybody else.
- Tell me about your family.
- Leo thomas was my dad.
And jessie dodson was my mother,
Thomas after they got married in 1949.
- What about jessie?
- She was just a cool mom,
But she was alcoholic.
- And tell me about leo. - He was funny.
He was a little dude. - [laughs]
- Everybody was scared of him.
I remember, nobody messed with him.
- Leo and jessie's marriage wasn't a happy one,
And it got even worse after leo lost a limb in an accident.
- And he had one arm, right? - Uh-huh, yes, he had one arm.
What I was told is he was playing chicken
On the railroad track.
And I don't know if it's true or not.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
- I know that you guys were all separated
When kathy was six.
You would have been seven, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- Sandy would have been around eight?
- Me and sandy's a year and 11 days apart.
- Linda's story is kind of tragic.
She had a rough childhood
'cause, you know, her mom gave her away
And she kept running away to go see her real mom.
- I love my mom and I wanted to be with her.
And that's all I knew.
I mean, even though I was adopted to good people,
There was something missing in my heart,
And I wanted my mom.
But why she got rid of all of us to begin with
Is due to drinking and running around.
She didn't want to be tied down to all of us kids.
- Since their father leo took kathy to oregon in 1959,
No one in oklahoma knew what happened to her.
Then in 1977, when kathy turned 24 years old,
Linda finally heard from her sister.
- She did come down here once when she was grown.
She was flaunting money.
Kathy had left her husband, and his name was jug.
And that's when she showed me pictures of the three babies.
She just left her kids with him.
- We always suspected that kathy was a mother,
But now we have proof.
- She said that she had three kids then.
I couldn't imagine her having three
'cause I just had the one, but she did show me pictures.
- Do you know how old the kids were in those pictures?
- They was young.
- We know that she's a mother, so there must be
A family member out there looking for her.
- For 23 years,
I said to the people that I was working with,
"somewhere out there there's somebody asking,
'where's my mom?' 'where's my sister?'
And that's who I want to get the answers for."
- But it's amazing.
- This is better than I expected.
- Now there's also the investigation of the homicide.
- Mm-hmm.
- That's something that's actively being worked.
I can't really say anything until all of that happens.
But we'll let you know how that goes.
- Yeah.
She's finally gonna get to rest.
'cause nobody who she was.
[gentle music]
But today it was like she finally got some peace.
♪ ♪
- It was a very difficult conversation.
But knowing the truth,
Hopefully this will help linda heal.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- For me, this case is not over
Until we can get some answers
To find out who did this to kathy,
And get those answers to linda and her family.
The good news to me is I have a name, buxton.
So why not, let's try and let's look
For property owners in oregon.
But then the team sends me
A little, tiny newspaper article from 1966
That listed the incident
Where kathy's father leo and his buddy die in a car.
Leo, him and a buddy get stuck in the mud.
They leave the car running 'cause it's too cold outside,
And they asphyxiate in the car.
And as is common when people are mentioned
In newspaper articles,
It lists the city that they're from.
And next to leo's name was the words "oakland, oregon."
And that was the first time we got a city in oregon
Where he's supposedly from.
I know oakland is a very small town.
It's not like salem or portland
Where you got hundreds of thousands of people.
So pretty quick property search
Of douglas county records for the name of "buxton,"
And up popped an older couple, so I gave them a call.
He was more than helpful, but he was like
"I'm sorry, I don't know the names you're throwing out."
I was about to hang up with him and he said,
"you know, people used to ask me when I moved here
If I'm related to richard buxton,"
Who I guess has been around here forever.
So I called richard,
I started to tell him a little bit about my case,
And he interrupted me and he said,
"is this about my adopted sister kathy?"
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- 23 years after our jane doe was murdered,
We finally know her name is kathy thomas,
Born in oklahoma.
Kathy's father, leo,
Took six-year-old kathy to oregon in 1959,
And adopted her out to a family named buxton.
- Kathy's adopted brother, richard, lives in oregon.
We're on our way to see him to find out
What he knows about kathy.
Which I knew was a small town in oregon,
So that caused me to search property records in oakland
For someone named buxton,
And I found an old couple who are in their 80s,
And they didn't know anything about the names
I was giving them, but right before I hung up,
They said, "people used to always ask me,
'are you related to richard buxton?'"
- Right. - And so I thought, well,
Let's try to find richard, and I did find him.
When I started talking to richard,
Telling him a little bit about our case,
And he interrupted me and said,
"is this about my adopted sister kathy?"
I was just speechless.
You know, I'm like, here we are.
I found somebody who knows kathy.
He said, "well, her dad's name was leo.
Her mom's name was jessie."
I'm like, "oh, richard, you and I
Are going to be doing a lot of talking, I think."
- A lot of talking.
We've just got such huge gaps in kathy's life,
So it would be nice to fill in some of these blanks.
There we go.
- Hi, rick. Nice to meet you. - You too.
- I think so.
- Oh, sweet!
- My wife dug out stuff out of an old cedar chest
That I had ended up with.
Didn't even know I had all this stuff.
- Oh, my god, look how cute you guys look.
Richard was six years old,
The same age kathy was, when kathy arrived with leo.
- There are some teenage ones in there.
- Mm-hmm. - Probably junior high.
- Richard's parents, ailene and orlin buxton,
Owned several properties.
One they rented to leo and kathy around 1960.
- This is the house that her and leo stayed in
When they came.
They lived in this room up here.
My mom had made all these into apartments,
Little single room, and they stayed up there.
- These are amazing. Why don't we do this?
Why don't we take a drive
Out to the house where you guys grew up?
- Yeah. - We'll just follow you.
- It's changed a lot, huh? - Okay. - Yep.
This was your guys' house?
- When you first met kathy, you were an only child, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- So what was it like having her around?
- She'd come walking up every morning,
My mom would let her come in and eat
Because she never had anything.
She didn't have any shoes.
We had a heck of a time getting her to wear shoes.
I can remember a story
That her dad would go into a beer joint.
Shouldn't have even took a kid in a beer joint,
But you could back then.
She could sing.
And she would sing and pass the hat.
- Maybe that's why he took her?
He figured she could make money for them.
- Oh, I think he'd just make food, is what I think,
Or beer.
- Horrible life for a kid.
- Yeah.
Her dad was a loser.
- Richard's mother, ailene buxton,
Took kathy under her wing
And became a positive influence in her life.
She even set up a bedroom inside their home for kathy,
And bought her clothes.
- She'd come up and never leave and--
[laughs] - became a permanent guest?
- Did leo bring up the idea of the adoption or did your mom?
- My mom.
Leo left to go find work and never come back.
And then he got in contact with my mom
And he was up against it, and my mom sent him $5,000,
Which was a lot of money in 1960.
- Sure. - Yeah it was.
- And he signed the adoption papers.
- She became richard's adopted sister.
- My mother wanted a daughter.
They couldn't have any kids.
They adopted me when I was, like, a newborn.
- Growing up, kathy and richard lost their adopted dad
To heart disease,
But kathy became close to her new mom, ailene.
Ten years later, in 1970, ailene became ill with cancer.
It hit kathy particularly hard.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
So when kathy meets 18-year-old carl tracy,
She was very vulnerable.
Though kathy was only 16, she and carl tied the knot.
Soon after, she was pregnant.
They were both teenagers, so it was no shock
That the relationship didn't last long.
- They got married in August of '70.
They got divorced in April of '71.
And he left the state almost immediately
And joined the navy.
I don't know if carl paid child support.
Hard to know what carl actually thought at the time.
Carl's actions are certainly suspect.
Perhaps he didn't want to be tied down
With a child or child support.
- Kathy gives birth to a daughter in July.
She names her tina ailene, in honor of her sick mom.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
Really, the only people that truly cared
About her was your mom,
And then she lost her at such a young, vulnerable age.
- Her security blanket was gone.
- Yeah.
In her will, ailene left a large estate
To richard and kathy to split when they turned 25.
- A couple years later, she was broke
And wanted to sell her part of the escrow that we'd set up.
And I tried to talk her out of it.
If she would have kept it,
It would have amounted to $360,000.
She would have had $1,000 a month coming for 30 years.
- Starting when you were 25. - Yes.
I mean, that don't sound like much now, but it was then.
- She just wanted the money. - She wanted out.
She sold me her part of the escrow.
It was a bad choice. Very bad choice.
- Very bad choice, versus hanging onto it.
- Yeah.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Tina's entitled to kathy's share of that.
- Yeah. - And I still got it.
- And your mom, I'm sure, would feel the same way.
- Yeah, but I'm afraid tina ain't with us.
I don't know who told me that,
But somebody said that that tina had passed away.
♪ ♪
- Richard told us that kathy's daughter tina died.
But we have to find out if that's true.
But a search for tina ailene comes up empty.
So we need to track down carl tracy,
Kathy's ex-husband, tina's father.
Does he know anything about kathy's murder?
Spouses, whether they are still married or not,
Are always potential suspects.
- We're trying to find out more information about her.
- Why do you doubt that they got divorced?
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- In oregon, kathy's adopted brother, richard buxton,
Told us that kathy had given birth
To a daughter named tina ailene when she was 17 years old.
Richard also revealed that kathy had married
And divorced the father, carl tracy.
We have to find out if carl knows anything
About his ex-wife's murder, but first we have to find him.
- The records I found show that he lived in the las vegas area.
[line ringing]
- Hey, is this carl tracy?
My name's john williams, I'm a detective
With the polk county sheriff's office up in oregon.
Wanted to know if you might have a few minutes
I could talk to you about kathy,
Who you were married to years ago?
- The information I've been able to find
Was that she had a girl with you,
And I think her name was tina,
But we've not been able to find any information about tina.
We were hoping that she might have--
- Okay.
This might actually be true,
'cause kathy has family out in oklahoma.
So I felt this was the time now I could reveal to carl
A little more about kathy.
Kathy is deceased,
And we're trying to find out what happened to her.
- Did you ever see her after you guys got divorced?
- Did you see her with somebody or not at all?
- When carl said the name jug gardner,
That immediately rang a bell.
Linda told me that when kathy came out for that visit,
That her husband's name was jug.
Did you ever hear that she got married to him
After she got married to you?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Well, thank you, carl.
- Detective williams finds no evidence linking carl tracy
To his ex-wife's murder.
- When carl and kathy got divorced,
He joined the navy and then once he got out of the navy,
He's been living in nevada, and have been for decades.
There was no evidence that carl was in oregon
At the time kathy was killed.
- Now, we need to find out what we can
About james gardner, nicknamed jug.
Is he still possibly in the area?
- We looked at birth records, marriage records,
Employment records,
And james "jug" gardner was a laborer.
And what was interesting, he rented an apartment
In the same building that kathy lived in,
And they must have hit it off.
- At the time, kathy was all alone.
She never had any close friends,
Probably stemming from being abandoned
By her biological parents.
Just 18 years old and with an infant daughter to raise,
Kathy turns to jug for support.
According to court records, the couple marry in December,
Two months after her mother's death.
Birth certificates reveal that in 1973,
Kathy gave birth to her second child, james, jr.,
And then her third child, candice, in 1974.
Kathy and james gardner had split up.
We need to find husband number two.
He might know something more
About where kathy was the night she was killed.
- James gardner, second husband,
Had a lot of addresses in his history.
A lot of phone numbers. They were all disconnected.
I was lucky enough to reach his sister.
She was not close to james.
She said, "I don't really know where he's at,
But he's in sutherland somewhere."
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
So it's this side of the street.
It's probably that blue house right there.
There's a lady. I'm gonna go talk to her.
- You go knock on the door,
And I can listen in the car what's going on.
- Hi there!
I work for the polk county sheriff's office
Up in the salem area.
I was trying to find a guy named james gardner.
Does he live here?
- Well, he's not in trouble.
He's my I.D.
- I'm in the car watching and listening,
I'm not sure who the woman is, maybe james' wife,
But I hope she can convince him to come out and talk.
- Hey, are you james?
- My name's john williams.
- Kathy's been missing for about 23 years, since '96.
- And we're trying to find out more information about her.
- I've got a helper helping me with this investigation.
Do you mind if she walks over and joins in the conversation?
- James, this is yolanda. - Hi.
- Without mentioning that kathy was dead,
We asked james about their relationship.
- When you guys got married,
I think it was like in '71,
Did she have a kid?
- My understanding is that you guys
Had two kids together.
- What happened with the kids
When you got divorced from kathy?
- Okay.
James was told by oklahoma child welfare
That kathy had the kids removed from her
Because she would leave them alone, unattended.
And at the time, they would have been five,
Six, seven years old.
And all three got put into foster care?
- And they were adopted out?
- It sounds like history is repeating itself.
Kathy and her biological sisters
Were separated from their parents
When they were about the same age as kathy's kids.
I'm not a therapist, but I can see how kathy's troubled past
Affected her ability to have a normal relationship,
Or to parent three small children.
James may have been upset with kathy for losing his kids,
But that's not all.
Money may have also played a part.
Kathy was due to inherit a fortune when she turned 25.
In my book,
That's a strong motivation if they were still married.
- Did she ever receive any kind of inheritance from her mom?
- But you didn't see any of that
When you are married to kathy?
- Okay.
- James gardner last saw kathy years before her death.
And he was living in southern oregon,
And there's really nothing to show
That he had anything to do with her death.
- Whatever happened with tina?
- I'm not sure on that.
- Do you still have contact with james and candy?
- Okay. - All right.
- Well...
- No, you gave us some information we didn't have,
So we appreciate it.
- Candice and james found their biological father.
Could they have reconnected with kathy before her death?
We've got to find them.
- Uncle billy who told us that those kids may still
Be living in oklahoma, and sure enough,
I found a number for candice thomas in tulsa.
I've been wanting to call her, but I really don't have
The heart to break the news over the telephone
That her mother passed away.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Hi candy, my name's john williams.
I'm a detective with the polk county sheriff's office
Up in oregon.
How are you doing?
- The reason I'm calling
Is I've had a case for about 23 years,
And we've determined that it involves your mother, kathy.
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[gentle music]
- For the past 11 months, detective williams and I
Have been trying to track down what happened to kathy thomas
And if her first child, tina, is still alive.
We located her youngest child, candice thomas, in oklahoma,
To find out what she might know.
- This was such an incredible moment
For detective williams and I.
Everyone thought that something possibly happened to tina,
And now both of us couldn't be more excited to know
That tina's here and well.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
Well, I am hoping that candy is still in touch with tina.
- Yeah.
- It's just gonna be an emotional moment.
'cause for the first time, you are going to hear
That your mother was murdered 23 years ago.
- It's a death notification, it really is.
- Mm-hmm.
- I've done a few of those, and they're not pleasant.
- This should be five and maybe the next one is seven.
All right, here we go.
[dog barking distantly]
[knocking on door]
- Hi. Are you candy? - Yep.
Candice is what I go by. Both: Candice.
- Candice. - All right. John williams.
- Nice to meet you. - Hi, yolanda mcclary.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
Well, thank you for seeing us.
[gentle music]
[candice sighs]
- The only memories that I have was from the foster home on.
I have no visual memories
Of james or kathy at all.
My mom and dad kept all the details from us.
Everybody knew but us, which, I mean,
You're not gonna tell kids, you know, what happened.
- Were you adopted together, all of you?
- James and I were adopted together.
- Okay.
- Tina was adopted one month before we were.
I can't tell you how we ended split up.
I can't tell you why tina ended up somewhere else.
I just know that she did.
I just know that she wasn't with me anymore.
We saw each other off and on for a couple years,
And then we grew apart.
There was just, I don't know,
A lot of outside factors that kept us apart, I think.
It's just, um--
It's just really, really hard
Because we're all so scarred, and we're all so hurt.
And we haven't known anything, I mean, anything at all.
So we've just walked around with a lot of hatred and anger
For many, many years.
I just knew that I was angry and I wanted to find her,
And I wanted to tell her off, and I wanted questions,
I wanted to know why.
And unfortunately, you know,
I'm never gonna get that answer.
I'm never gonna be able to ask her, "why?"
Why she did the things she did. It's just not gonna happen.
My mom was young.
You know, she had a rough life.
It's very understandable that my mom would make mistakes
And that she needed support.
And then it finally dawned on me that, you know,
My mom was the victim and not the perpetrator in that crime,
And so it changed things quite a bit.
It completely-- it changed things.
- But what's important is, it's not your fault,
What happened to you.
It's not tina's fault, and it's not james' fault.
I mean, you were kind of the victims of kathy's
Not able to take care of you.
So maybe something good that can come out of this
Is you guys can put aside whatever it was
And reconnect and stay connected and, you know.
- And I think we will.
We slowly are, and this'll help get some closure
To maybe start healing a little bit.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
I know, but they've got a lot of information.
I mean, I found out a lot.
And they would like to talk to you.
I mean...
Would you like-- would you want to--
- Yeah, why don't you talk to her.
Ah.
- Hi tina. My name's john williams.
- I've been working this case for over six years,
And then yolanda and her team
Started to assist me in doing genealogical dna testing,
And we were able to finally determine
Just a couple months ago
That it was in fact kathy, your mom.
- I wish we could've provided
This info to you and candice years ago,
But unfortunately it finally took till technology
Kind of caught up with these kind of cases.
- Yeah.
- Tell me the last thing you remember.
- I can only tell you some of the things that we found.
So you have an aunt sandy and an aunt linda.
Linda, your aunt, would love to talk to you.
- I had no idea about my aunt.
No clue. I did know that some of--
That we had some family members in okemah.
And obviously I'm amazed, I'm in shock.
I'm excited.
- We're going to meet with your aunt tomorrow.
- Got some family members who would love to meet you.
- We appreciate you talking to us.
- So--
- Thanks, tina. Have a good night.
- Thanks tina.
- Give me a hug. - Oh.
- Gosh.
You have a lot to sink in, but it'll be all right.
Well, thank you guys. - I hope I see you tomorrow.
- I said many times over the years,
Somewhere out there, there's somebody,
And this is better than I expected,
To be able to actually meet kathy's relatives
And give them the information that they've been looking for.
'cause you were all adopted, - mm-hmm.
- And then kathy's kids were adopted.
- They were adopt-- - oh, really?
- Yeah, they were adopted too.
- Ooh.
- Yeah, all three of them were adopted.
- Oh, here we go again.
- I'll be right back.
- I mean, it just screws up the family so bad.
- Linda, I want to introduce you to your nieces.
- Oh, my god!
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[gentle music]
- Linda, I want to introduce you to your nieces.
- Oh, my god! - This is candice.
- Are you serious? - And that's tina.
- Oh, my god!
Oh, man.
That's all I've ever wanted.
It's amazing.
And I got to say, you look like your mother.
You know it? - No.
- You do. You look like your mother.
- It's still very shocking.
- That's all I've ever wanted.
Almost like an out-of-body experience for me.
Many, many years I've always wondered,
I've always thought to myself, if only I knew.
- If only I had something to fill in those blanks.
- All of a sudden, it was right there in my lap.
[light music]
I could remember her holding me.
I have this vision and these little flashes of her face.
There was obviously some negligence,
There was intervention by the state of oklahoma
At some point.
And we were taken and placed in foster care.
And I remember crying.
I was just holding this little bag and I was,
"I want to go with you, mommy. I want to go!"
- You see, these--
This was the first time I've ever seen her.
When I saw these pictures, it was the first time
I've ever had a visual of her.
You know, I didn't even know
What to picture for her to look like.
I had no image to go by or anything like that.
I just knew that I wanted to find her.
- It breaks my heart because part of me is angry
And part of me is heartbroken
Because of the circumstances and how she died.
She was alone.
- And she suffered.
- And she obviously suffered quite a bit.
She is at peace.
Maybe this is her reaching back out and helping us
Get to some kind of closure. - Mm-hmm.
[dramatic music]
[engine rumbles]
- Now that we identified kathy and found her children,
This was not the end for me or detective williams.
♪ ♪
It looks like the same year that tina, candice,
And james jr. Were adopted, kathy had moved to portland.
Perhaps she was trying to start over
After two bad relationships and sad memories.
Here, people wouldn't know her past.
So then what happens?
- So we do know that in 1984 she meets another guy.
His name is brian clifton,
And he's from the portland area.
He's got parents, a brother, maybe a sister.
And they actually get married in portland.
- Ooh. Okay.
- Apparently kathy didn't like to stay in one place,
And after she married brian,
They moved from portland to the salem area,
About 50 miles away.
Did we ever find anything that they had any children?
- I don't believe they had children.
- Okay, so brian and kathy though,
Were actually married for quite some time, right?
- They were, from '84 to at least '96.
- Now the question is,
Were kathy and brian still legally married
When kathy was found murdered on September 1, 1996?
There's also no divorce, which is kind of odd.
- It is, because we found her divorces
From the first marriages.
They were pretty easy to find, and why can't we find that one?
- I guess the one thing that just really,
Really just keeps getting to me is,
You never see your wife again,
But you don't report her missing either.
- How does someone go missing
And no one reports them missing?
- Yeah.
- So we've got a lot of questions.
[tense music]
- Do we know anything else about brian?
- Well, he does have kind of a past.
In 1973,
He was convicted of murder.
Sentenced to life in prison.
- Convicted of murder? - Convicted of murder.
23 years before kathy was murdered,
Brian was convicted of a different murder.
For strangulating a female motel clerk...
♪ ♪
...With a vacuum cleaner electrical cord,
Over what he stated was a robbery of, like, $65.
♪ ♪
He actually gets sentenced to life in prison
In 1974,
And he actually gets out of prison.
- And gets paroled when? - 1981.
Up where kathy was murdered, 24 years ago,
There's ropes everywhere.
There's ropes binding the tarps,
Possibly could have been a strangulation of her as well.
And from our research, we also found there are
Some interesting things about the physical aspects
Of brian that match things at the scene.
Brian's information shows he's 6-foot, 150 pounds.
The pants found at the scene are size 34/34.
That's consistent.
The shirt from the bag
And the one he's wearing appear to be identical.
He's got brown hair.
- Same color of hair that was found near kathy's body,
Believed to belong to the killer.
But it's what brian doesn't do that sparks our curiosity.
- No one reports her missing.
They don't appear to have gotten divorced.
She was never declared deceased by anyone.
To me, all of those line up with someone
Who doesn't want anyone looking into kathy's background.
That's huge red flags.
- So obviously, brian's a person of interest.
Do you know where he's at?
After brian left salem area, moved to portland...
And it kind of looks like he bought a piece of property
From his parents.
I found a deed that shows he purchased a house in 2008
But there was a woman on the deed with him named tina.
Not kathy's eldest daughter, but the same name.
And the deed listed them as husband and wife.
- How do you get married
When you maybe aren't even divorced yet?
What do we know about brian today?
- In 2010, brian and tina moved to new hampshire together.
And then he appears to move, of all places, to oklahoma.
Through a criminal records search,
I was able to find that booking photo
From oklahoma in 2016.
For a driving infraction.
- Okay, so traffic infraction, violation.
- But at this point, I'm not exactly sure where he's living.
We're trying to find that.
Kathy was murdered 24 years ago.
Right now, our primary focus is on the last person
Kathy was married to, brian clifton.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
24 years after we found his wife kathy dead
On a hill in oregon.
My team wants to approach him,
But we also don't want to blow our one shot
And risk having him flee
Before we have confirmed evidence.
What we need now is brian's dna
And see if it matches any of the dna from the scene.
We've got the semen stain, we've got hair.
If his dna matches what's at the scene,
He automatically becomes our prime suspect.
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Kathy had a hard life.
Looking for love, kathy went through a series of men
That didn't care about her.
Her last husband didn't even bother to report her missing
When she disappeared.
And just a few months later, her remains were found.
- While searching for brian,
I found his sister brenda in wisconsin,
And I reached out to her
To see if she'd be willing to help.
[line ringing]
- Hi, is this brenda?
- Hi, brenda, this is detective john williams.
I'm calling from the polk county sheriff's office
In oregon.
Is a good time for you?
- Okay, so I have a case where I have
A missing person, who's kathy,
Was married to brian at one point.
- Do you recall whatever happened
To brian and kathy's marriage, how it ended or any of that?
- Why do you doubt that they got divorced?
- So he would've illegally married another woman?
- Okay.
So you don't talk to brian. You don't know where he's at?
- Yeah.
- I got you.
Well, and that's what I'm showing too.
- Let me give you some details.
So in 1996,
Hunters found skeletonized remains of a female.
- We do have the dna found at the scene
On some men's clothing that was left behind.
I would think has to be related
To whoever put the body there.
- So we have a couple of things we might try,
And one is if we can get dna from a relative
To get the best, you know, say, oh, yeah, that's a sister--
- Would you be willing if we sent you a dna kit
To just swab your cheek and mail it back?
- Oh, that's awesome.
- Okay.
To see what it matches at the scene,
That's gonna be super critical.
This would be an amazing boost to this case.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Now that we know brian's sister is a sibling match
To the dna found at the crime scene,
I could finally tell her family
And give them some closure.
I'm going to see kathy's daughters, tina and candice,
And kathy's sister, linda.
Never met each other before all of this,
So I think it's great that they all get to know each other,
And that they do have family left.
Something they've always wanted, and they have it.
Well, how are my most three favorite women doing?
- Hello! - Hello!
- Look at you, pretty woman.
- How are things going getting to know each other?
- With us, it's good. - Oh, it's just--
- Is there something that's not?
- It is what it's supposed to be.
- I know.
- Well, I just wanted you to know there were three
Really important things for me to do in this case if I could.
One of them was to identify her.
Give her her name back.
Which would then open up roads, second,
To hopefully help the investigation.
You know, once you know about her life,
Once we found out about all of you guys,
I mean, that all came about because of her identity.
So many roads have been open, learned a lot.
And then the third most important thing to me,
So hold on one second.
- Is she going to do something sneaky?
- I don't know.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
- Oh, my--oh!
- Third most important thing.
- Oh, my god!
- Is to bring her home, where she belongs.
♪ ♪
From the bottom of all of our hearts.
- It's okay, baby girl.
♪ ♪
- [sobbing]
- We really got close. These are my girls.
- You're family. - That's so beautiful.
- It is. - Thank you.
- I love it.
It was right then that my heart went up in my throat,
And it was like I couldn't say nothing.
Because I knew what it was.
Knowing that she is home, where she belongs,
It was beautiful.
This is your mama.
It is so beautiful. I mean, look at that.
- I think everything just really hit home even harder.
The fact that I, you know,
Knowing for 23 years
That she couldn't-- she couldn't reach out,
She couldn't check on us,
You know, that something had happened...
It actually made me start to heal a little bit.
- She needs to come home, okay? - Yeah, yeah.
- To be able to actually put her fully at rest,
We've talked about that so much.
And what yolanda has done is so heartfelt that we can--
I don't know that we'll ever be able
To really thank her enough.
- There's a lot of great,
Great things that came out of this.
- We're thankful for that, and what you've done,
'cause you brought this wonderful woman into our life.
Thank you, yolanda. Thank you so much.
- Wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't have my baby girls.
- Well, you're family.
- I'm just grateful to detective williams, yolanda,
'cause I know my two nieces in my life right now.
And we talk every day.
We have got so close,
And I'll give them the love that they need from my sister.
Think her girls are my girls now.
They're still her babies,
But I'm giving them and they're giving me back.
- My mother's case, it's not just another jane doe.
She's a person with a story.
She had family that cared about her.
I would have liked for her to have--see me now.
I think she would've been proud.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
- A year has passed since I started this investigation.
My mission was always to identify our jane doe,
To give her back to her family, and give her back her name.
And I've done that with kathy's case.
- It's been a lot of hard work. - Yeah.
- A lot of phone calls, a lot of going down dead ends.
The adoptions threw us for a loop--
- Yes.
- But we persevered, we kept going.
I was totally clueless to how, you know,
Third cousins and genealogy and all that work,
But I knew we had yolanda's team behind us.
It was a slow process for a while
And then it started building steam
Until kind of everything came together
And we finally identified kathy.
- Kathy got her name back.
Her identity back.
Nobody should die without it.
Her family thought she walked away,
Maybe didn't want anything to do with them,
I don't believe that.
But unfortunately, she didn't have any more choices
After that of what she would've wanted to do with her life.
She's been so wronged in so many ways.
I just hope now that her family can start to heal.
You and I said we would figure it out.
We said we'd take her home.
And that we would pursue any roads
That opened up to find out who killed her.
- And that continues.
- Obviously the truth is ultimately what we're after.
- Right.
- The case is now in the investigators' hands.