The mysterious death of a mother in Tri-Cities 37 years ago is closer to some answers

Cameron Probert

A 37-year-old mystery may have taken its first step toward being solved on Monday.

The Benton County coroner officials and sheriff’s deputies exhumed the remains of an unidentified woman buried in 1986 at a Richland cemetery.

Jane Doe was laid to rest in a cardboard box inside a concrete vault near the back of the Resthaven Cemetery.

“We need to know who she is,” Coroner Bill Leach said. “If there is family out there, they need to know where their loved ones are at.”

He is hoping to identify the woman whose lower body was found in the Columbia River on Sept. 2, 1986, by construction workers on the Highway 395 blue bridge.

An autopsy at the time showed she’d given birth to at least one child, so Leach believes it’s possible that a family member can be found.

Scientific advances may also make it possible to determine how she died.

“If she’s a victim of a crime, identifying her could very well lead law enforcement into that investigative side where they could actually track down a suspect,” he said.

Officials from the Benton County Coroner’s Office and the Benton County Sheriff’s Office document the exhumation of an unidentified woman’s remains from 1986.
Officials from the Benton County Coroner’s Office and the Benton County Sheriff’s Office document the exhumation of an unidentified woman’s remains from 1986.

Leach initially was concerned that the condition of her remains after 37 years could make it harder to remove her for the analysis.

But investigators were lucky and the work went quickly, lasting about an hour.

Her remains were taken to the coroner’s office in Kennewick, where officials will work with a private firm that uses DNA to help police solve cold cases.

Mystery discovered

Leach learned about the body when someone contacted him in July after finding it while researching cemeteries.

“I’ve been in the coroner’s office since 2013 and during that time, we’d never heard of it,” he said. “So I did my own research ... and the unfortunate part is that we were unable to find any coroner records from that time, any autopsy records, any police reports. Anything that would give us any indication of who this person was.”

A cemetery marker labeled Jane Doe from September 1986 in the Resthaven Cemetery in Richland contains the partial remains of an unidentified woman found along the Columbia River shoreline near the blue bridge in Kennewick.
A cemetery marker labeled Jane Doe from September 1986 in the Resthaven Cemetery in Richland contains the partial remains of an unidentified woman found along the Columbia River shoreline near the blue bridge in Kennewick.

The only records of the woman’s death are two Tri-City Herald stories written when she was found.

Forensic Pathologist William Brady of Portland told the Herald at the time that she likely had been in the water for at least six months and had given birth to at least one child.

Brady estimated she was about 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-8, about 30 to 35, with brownish-blonde hair.

But he didn’t find any wounds that might have caused her death.

With no more information to go on, she was buried at Resthaven on Williams Boulevard.

The partial remains of the unidentified woman discovered in the Columbia River near the blue bridge in 1986 will undergo DNA testing.
The partial remains of the unidentified woman discovered in the Columbia River near the blue bridge in 1986 will undergo DNA testing.

The lost records are making piecing together the history of the woman more difficult, Leach said.

“We’re starting at square one,” he said. “The challenge is we don’t have anything, and hopefully that will all change here in the next few weeks.”

DNA testing

Othram Labs will perform the DNA test with the aim of of finding a relative, possibly her child or grandchild, Leach said.

The company’s technology enables the U.S. National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, according to their website.

A member of the Benton County Coroner’s Office helps with the exhumation of an unidentified woman buried in 1986 in Richland.
A member of the Benton County Coroner’s Office helps with the exhumation of an unidentified woman buried in 1986 in Richland.

Their laboratory has helped solve a 1978 murder in Spokane, identify the body of a man found in a wooded area near Newport and ID a man from a small fragment of his skull found in the Spokane River.

When the woman’s body was found in the Columbia River, DNA testing was still a novel science. It’s first use in a criminal court happened in the same year

There are at least four other unidentified people who have been buried in the county that Leach would like to identify, including a baby found in the Richland landfill in 1989.

Advertisement