When investigators find human remains that they can’t identify, they refer to them as “John Doe” or “Jane Doe.”
These neutral names simply act as a placeholder for use in official materials. The idea is that a name that sounds vaguely like a real person’s moniker is more respectful than referring to the remains as “unidentified body.”
Often, when investigators use the term “Doe” to refer to an unidentified individual’s remains, they expect to find out the person’s identity shortly. Typically, things like dental records, missing person reports, tattoos, and identification by family members can help reveal the person’s real name. Sometimes, however, cases go cold, and the authorities are forced to close the case with the victim still identified only as “Jane Doe.”
This was the case with a body found in Clark County, Nevada. The remains were discovered in October 1980 by two brothers, one of whom was an off-duty police officer. The brothers saw the body in a “posed” position in the Arroyo Grande wash near State Route 146. The remains were known only as the Arroyo Grande Jane Doe for years. That is until a break in December 2021 helped identify the girl as a long-missing teenager from Roswell, New Mexico.
Discovery of the Body
Warning: the following section contains unornamented descriptions of the state of the victim’s remains. Reader discretion is advised.
On October 5, 1980, around 9 p.m., two brothers in Clark County, Nevada, made a startling discovery. They found a girl’s body, likely between thirteen and seventeen years old, “posed” just south of the Arroyo Grande wash. In the modern era, the region is now the I-215 Beltway. When the siblings saw the body, they immediately contacted the authorities, who determined that the girl’s cause of death was from a two-pronged instrument used in a stabbing manner.
The authorities immediately gathered that the victim had been brutally assaulted before her death. Her skull bore marks indicating a series of blows from a roofing hammer, an attack so severe it caused her to lose one of her back teeth. Likewise, she had a pronounced gap between two of her top teeth, which was likely caused by the assault.
The body was facedown, recently washed, and near a yellow shower curtain. Her arm bore a recently-inked “S” tattoo, blue in color, that might have had connections to a human trafficking ring. Despite the lack of physical evidence at the scene, the authorities launched a full-scale investigation to determine who the victim was.
Investigating the Crime
The authorities immediately suspected the girl had been a victim of human trafficking, owing to the presence of the tattoo on her right arm and the brutal nature of her injuries. They determined that she likely died the day before her body was discovered. She was dropped in the canyon due to its remote location.
There were a few critical details found on her body. For one thing, she had extensive dental work done, indicating that she was likely not poor. Her dental work was also unusual. She had a bizarre “suture” procedure done to straighten one of her teeth, resulting in a search for her dental records. Police were unable to determine her identity, despite this prominent dental work, which confused investigators.
Likewise, due to the girl’s young age and likely avoidance of law enforcement during her life, her fingerprints were not on file in any police databanks. Police created composite sketches of what she would have looked like when she was alive and circulated the images to jog recognition among the public. Eventually, the investigators turned to more advanced technology to try and crack the case.
Technology Advances
When dental records and fingerprints were insufficient to determine the identity of the Arroyo Grande Jane Doe, investigators turned to then-new techniques that would allow them to sequence the victim’s DNA. Her DNA was extracted after her body was exhumed, and the profile was uploaded to national databases.
Investigators hoped that this would help them find a genetic match to identify the victim’s family members. They hoped this would give them enough information to crack the case open. Sadly, DNA sequencing also failed to shed any light on the case. The victim’s family likely hadn’t performed any DNA sequencing, making connecting them to the teenager impossible.
The work then turned to a process of elimination, comparing the victim against missing person reports made in the absence of a body. The Arroyo Grande Jane Doe was compared against 20 unique missing persons and was eliminated as a candidate each time. Despite the use of advanced technology, the case was stalling out, and investigators began to grow frustrated.
Composite Sketches and a Lasting Legacy
For over 40 years after the remains were discovered, it seemed like the Arroyo Grande Jane Doe would just be another tragically unidentified victim. The discovery of her body led to many police departments implementing their own cold case units to help make sure such a frustrating stalling out would not happen in future investigations.
In 2015, the former Clark County coroner, Mike Murphy, made a public appeal to find out the identity of the Jane Doe. He partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to provide a series of composite sketches of what the Jane Doe would have looked like while alive. Murphy stated during a YouTube video that “someone is missing their little girl – someone knows who she is – someone needs to come forward and help us.”
The frustration boiling over in the case made it evident that the investigators were at something of a loss. Despite the use of genetic sequencing, multiple composite sketches, and numerous public requests for information, it seemed that no one knew who the Jane Doe was. Whatever had happened to her, by 2021, it seemed like her case would remain a mystery forever.
A Break in the Case
Then, in December 2021, something incredible happened. A forensic genealogist named Barbara Rae-Venter supervised another effort to identify the Jane Doe’s family members using her DNA sequence. After taking DNA samples from two women who had reported their sister missing in September of 1980, the team discovered that the Jane Doe was Tammy Corrine Terrell.
Tammy Terrell disappeared from Roswell, New Mexico, on September 28, 1980. She had been living at a girl’s home at the time and was described as a troubled teen. The last night she was seen, she was dropped off at a state fair with a friend her age. The two girls reportedly spent some time together at the fair before Tammy slipped off to a nearby Denny’s diner.
According to reports from the night of Tammy’s disappearance, she was last seen alive at the Denny’s in Roswell. She was with a man and a woman whom onlookers were unable to identify. Six days later, her remains were found in Nevada and dubbed “the Arroyo Grande Jane Doe.”
After over 40 years of worrying and wondering, Tammy’s sisters were finally given some closure in the case.
Cold Comfort
While the break in the case was vindicating for investigators and somewhat comforting for Tammy’s family, it offers a mixed blessing. Her murderer was never brought to justice. Learning her name is a massive step in the right direction. However, there is not any further evidence in the case. It seems unlikely that the police will ever determine the truth of what happened to her.
Tammy’s face had been posted all over the internet in the years before her identification. Her DNA had been sequenced and compared against hundreds of other samples. Thousands of law enforcement officers tried to solve the case. And in the end, a small break and a lucky DNA match led them to the truth. But the positive identification raises as many questions as it answers.
What was Tammy doing with an unidentified couple at a small diner outside of Roswell? Why would she sneak away from her friends and willingly mingle with strangers? And, grimly, what could have happened to her over five days between her disappearance and her likely date of death? These are questions that do not have easy answers. Without any physical evidence and barring any other breaks in the case, the trail is once again cold.
The Search for Truth and Justice
What do we want when we study unsolved mysteries and grisly murders? Finding out that an unknown victim was really just a troubled teen who made a few bad decisions does little to lighten the brutality of her death. In a perfect world, the search for truth would also help bring about justice.
There is no statute of limitations on murder. If the Clark County authorities received evidence that led to a break in Tammy’s murder tomorrow, they could make an arrest and charge the suspect, even 43 years after the fact. But such an arrest seems unlikely without another miraculous break in the case. Sadly, Tammy Terrell’s memory might never know justice – but at least now her family knows a tiny bit of peace.
