Forensic genetic genealogy has named the woman, whose body was found on a cliff in 1966, as Dorothy Jean Williams.
Almost six decades after a woman’s body was found on a cliff in northern California, DNA testing has solved the mystery of her identity.
Dorothy Jean Williams’s body was discovered on 18 December 1966 on a cliff in Tiburon, near San Francisco, by a hunter who contacted the authorities.
They were unable to identify Williams, who was estimated to be between 45 and 60 at her time of death, according to Othram, the forensic genetic genealogy company who says its services solved the cold case.
Williams, who was described as wearing a red dress and an off-white trench coat and having red hair, was around 157cm tall and weighed about 47kg when her remains were discovered.
Although they were unable to confirm her identity at the time, the authorities learned that a woman matching Williams’s description had been seen at a fire station three months before her body was found, according to a local newspaper report from the time.
She reportedly told staff that she was stranded without money for transport, and requested to sleep at the station. When the staff refused, she left.
The autopsy placed her time of death around three months prior to the discovery of her body, which was said to be “badly decomposed” by the time it was discovered, according to the archival news report clipping shared by Othram.
Unidentified, she was known for decades only as the “Marin County Jane Doe”. Now, thanks to the information revealed by genetic testing, we know that Williams, whose married name was Dorothy Jean Vaillancourt, was originally from Tasmania in Australia.
“From the perspective of the family of this woman, she just disappeared and they may have thought they’d never know where she went, but now, almost 60 years later, they know the truth,” said Kristen Mittelman, chief development officer for Othram.
“It doesn’t matter how old a case is, or whether it was hopeless in the past, there is technology here today that works, and it is able to give answers to a lot of families, like in this case.”
There had been several unsuccessful attempts to identify Williams, and her body had been entered into National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) as UP12018, according to the genetic testing company.
The case was solved after the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, working alongside the California Department of Justice, submitted evidence to Othram’s lab, which assembled a DNA profile that linked Williams to her relatives.
Euronews reached out to Marin County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
In recent years, investigative genetic genealogy has become an important tool in solving cold cases, using a combination of technology and genealogical research to reveal the identities of those involved in crimes, sometimes many decades old.
The method grabbed headlines after it was used to identify Joseph DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer, leading to his arrest in 2018. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced for 13 murders in 2020.
