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The end of a mystery?

 
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maryland missing



Joined: 08 Sep 2003
Posts: 86
Location: near Frederick

PostPosted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 12:09 pm    Post subject: The end of a mystery? Reply with quote

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/dws/...a.2c98a274.html

The end of a mystery?

Investigator: ‘Jane Doe’ could be Okla. woman missing for 26 years


07:15 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004


By Donna Fielder / Staff Writer




The young woman’s body sprawled in a creek bed, half in the water, looking as though she’d been running for her life and lost the race.

Twenty-six years ago, Denton County sheriff’s deputies knew only that they had a "Jane Doe" who had taken seven bullets in that ditch off FM156 north of Krum. They never found out who shot her, why, or even who she was. They buried her in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Denton’s Oakwood Cemetery.


DRC/Barron Ludlum
Tarrant County Medical Examiner Investigator John Looper (in red shirt) and Denton County Sheriff’s Investigator Don Britt search for the grave where they plan to exhume an unidentified woman’s body that was found in Denton County 26 years ago. The woman’s plot has no stone but is included in a map of the cemetery.
Today, a sheriff’s investigator believes he finally has some of the answers to the quarter-century-old mystery. And soon, the woman’s remains will be exhumed for DNA testing to prove his theory.

That could mean that a 79-year-old Elk City, Okla., woman finally will learn what happened to her daughter and the Beckham County, Okla., Sheriff’s Office can close a missing person case.

Denton County Sheriff’s Investigator Don Britt began working the April 10, 1978, cold case four years ago, hoping to clear it off the books, he said. In an old file, he found photographs of the dead woman, who looked between 18 and 22 years old, along with the bullets, an autopsy file and the yellowed reports that reflected the frustration of Sheriff’s Investigator Dwight Crawford.

Crawford, now retired, said the woman looked like she might have American Indian genes, and he looked in Oklahoma but never found a clue.

There were seven jacketed .38-caliber bullets, one of which had passed through her body and was lying underneath her, he said. She had been hit four times in the back and in the head, side and chest.

"It looked like she ran right down that ditch towards that creek," Crawford said. "If it was a revolver, which I think it was, they would have had to reload. I think they were coming south on I-35 and took the 156 exit. It looked like she got out and took off running and they shot her down."

Britt ran the woman’s description and other information through an FBI database of missing persons. He got back a long list of possible hits, he said, and he began going through them.

"I worked my way slowly, and I found one good one in California," Britt said. "I really thought it was her. But it just wasn’t."

He didn’t give up, but he put the project on a back burner, returning two or three more times over the past four years, but the mystery remained unsolved.

On Oct. 10, he read a newspaper article about a Washington State Patrol detective who solved an 11-year-old missing person case using the Web site www.doenetwork.us. A volunteer organization maintains the site that has photographs and relevant information about missing persons.

Britt and fellow sheriff’s investigator Allen Gibson searched the site.

"Allen said, ‘Hey, you ought to look at this girl,’" Britt said. "The longer we looked, the better it looked."

The missing woman who looked like the photographs was Melva Lynn Hudgens, 18, of Elk City, Okla. According to the information listed, she was last seen getting into a car with two men after she and two friends experienced car trouble. According to the story, the two other young women refused to get into the car.

Britt contacted the Beckham County Sheriff’s Office, which had put the information on the Web site only a month earlier. According to information from the Beckham County Sheriff’s Office, Hudgens’ mother first reported her missing in June 1978. She periodically checked with the office, and in September 2003 she again contacted sheriff’s deputies and the case was reopened.

Hudgens’ mother and sister recently looked at photographs taken of the dead woman and believe it is their missing relative, according to the sheriff’s information.

Britt is working with Tarrant County Medical Examiner Investigator John Looper, and they hope to exhume the body as early as this week. The remains will be taken to the medical examiner’s office in Fort Worth for examination.

There is no stone, but they have a map of the old cemetery that locates the "Jane Doe" in a numbered plot.

Looper said the body was buried in a wooden casket, which is sure to have collapsed by now. He hopes there will be bones and hair left.

"If we can extract DNA from bones, we could have results in a week," Looper said.

Britt is hopeful that he has the right woman. Original files in the missing person case in Oklahoma have not been located, he said, and the older woman is unsure of some of the details of her daughter’s disappearance. He is not sure why it took two months for her to be reported missing, but it explains why Crawford’s Oklahoma inquiries were not successful.

Beckham County law enforcement officers have worked hard and were instrumental in the investigation, Britt said. They continue to work hard on the case, and so does he.

"We think we’ve got her identified," Britt said. "But it isn’t over. Now we have a murder case to solve."

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885.
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Maryland's Missing persons
www.marylandmissing.com
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Congratulations on this success story helped by doenetwork, maryland missing. Great work from your network and the police!

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