Police get new lead in 18-year-old homicide

By Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer 11/21/08

Cold case detectives have uncovered a new lead and created a lifelike photograph in the 18-year-old mystery involving the District’s only female murder victim who has yet to be identified, D.C. police said.

Jane Doe was found in a trash bin on the 5100 block of Sargent Road NE in August 1990, during one of the most violent years in the city’s history. Her face was badly beaten and she was stabbed all over the head.

“She was battered, bloodied and bruised,” said Detective Jim Trainum of the Violent Crime Case Review Project. “There was nothing that you could show to anyone, and if you did, there was nothing that they could identify. All we had at first were bad sketches.”

Recently, the National Center of the Missing and Exploited Children got close-up photos of the victim’s face taken in the autopsy.
Experts used computers to clean up the photos to create a natural-looking picture.

At the same time, detectives received a tip that someone in a nearby apartment building might have brought Jane Doe to D.C. from outside the region for the purpose of prostitution.

Detectives are going to place her picture on national Web sites and track down people who were living in the building at the time to see whether they recognized her from the new photo.

“It think we’re much more likely to get someone to recognize that picture than the earlier picture,” Trainum said.

Jane Doe was clad in torn denim jeans over shorts, and a black T-shirt with flowers that said “Voo Doo Beach Body Glove.”

The woman was 5-foot-2 and 108 pounds, with cropped hair.

Anyone with information on the case can contact police at the new tip line at 888-919-2776 or through a text messaging number: 50-411.

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