Roselvr
Ask me how to get your loved one in NamUs
Just curious, how do you make a home made tattoo? What do you use for ink?
India ink
Just curious, how do you make a home made tattoo? What do you use for ink?
Wow. 36 years today. Poor Arroyo Grande Jane Doe! Rest in peace, sweet girl. :rose:
One of Clark County's oldest murder mysteries remains a priority for the Henderson Cold Case Unit. A young woman, found dead, lying naked on a Henderson road.
Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe was one of the reasons Clark County started its cold case project, but 36 years after her murder, she still doesn't have her real name.
A reconstruction of what she looked like when she was alive are on websites and posters that are being passed out at various missing persons events, and a billboard was created to reach more eyes.
The case now in the hands of Henderson Lieutenant Garrett Poinier and his colleagues.
This is a cold case detectives have tried to crack for decades, since October 5, 1980.
"Multiple people in that age frame went missing during that time. {Henderson} only has one case, but in the valley, there are several other cases that are possibly tied to this case. So if you can ID the victim it helps you decide if you can tie them to other victims," said Poinier.
John Williams was the Henderson police officer who discovered the young woman's body along what was once a dirt road near the Arroyo Grande Wash. News 3 went to her grave with Williams in May 2015. On the anniversary of her death and on holidays, he and his wife pay her a visit. They even paid for her gravestone.
"She had been struck numerous times in the face-- apparently with fists. And then in the back of the head with what appeared to be a roofing or framing hammer. And then stabbed with a two-pronged instrument in the back," he said.
In 2016, Clark County is seeing various agencies including the non-profit, "Can You Identify Me?" joining the effort to find who Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe was by handing out fliers in hopes someone will recognize her.
For now, all we know is she was a white woman, 14-25 years old with brown hair and blue eyes, standing 5'2" tall. We are also learning an "S" was roughly carved into her right forearm. It could have been a homemade tattoo representing someone's initial, showing branding or ownership.
But Jane Arroyo Grande Doe has an extended family. John Williams is the Henderson police officer who discovered her body and has spent the past 35 years trying to solve her murder.
"Extremely hurt that we haven't been able to identify her, at least," says Williams. "I say my prayers every night to at least get her identified and find out who she is and get some closure on that portion."
Williams and his wife frequently visited Jane Arroyo Grande Doe at Palm Mortuary in Henderson. The couple even purchased her gravestone.
My wife and I come over all the time. You know just little flowers and stuff," he says. "I just want to keep her in my thoughts and in my heart."
Now retired, Williams is still involved in Jane Arroyo Grande Does case. This summer he, along with the Clark County coroners office and Henderson Police Department, traveled to NCMEC in Virginia to present her case.
Williams says that a billboard with Jane Arroyo Grande Does image and information will be posted in southern Nevada in the near future.
"Jane Arroyo Grande Doe was found just south of State Route 146, west of Arroyo Grande Boulevard in Henderson on October 5, 1980.
"She had light brown shoulder-length hair, pierced ears and blue eyes. She had a small tattoo on her right forearm. The tattoo was blue and appeared to be homemade. She was wearing silver colored fingernail polish and had a vaccination scar on her left bicep. She had a gap between two teeth on the upper right side of her mouth. She was between 14 to 25 years old, and approximately 5 feet 2 inches tall and 103 pounds."
__________________________It started with a young, pretty girl.
She was found face down and nude in the middle of Arroyo Grande Boulevard in 1980. Her cause of death was multiple stab wounds in her back and blunt force trauma to her head.
She should have been easy to recognize. But no one identified her.
The Clark County coroners office took X-rays, finger*prints and dental samples but couldnt find a match in any existing databases.
Back in the day, thats the way everybody did business, Coroner Michael Murphy said. Were talking about the science of the 80s and 90s versus today. We were very limited in the resources we could get.
In November 2003, the 14- to 20-year-old girl remained unidentified. The Clark County Coroners Office had exhausted all techniques available at the time.
Except one: the Internet.
Some people came up with the idea of putting dead peoples photos on the World Wide Web, Murphy said. I said, Weve done everything else. Why not this? 
The initial reaction was not positive.
I was convinced I had made a big blunder, and I thought I would lose my job, he said.
But then reports from family members started coming in, and people started identifying their loved ones.
Within 24 hours, we had identified our first decedent, Murphy said. The response that we got was amazing. That started to kind of give us a boost. Within 72 hours, we had identified another one. A week later, another, and we were off the ground running.
In the 10 years since the November 2003 inception of the online program, the coroners office cold case unit has identified 67 people. About 200 open cases remain.
Its not an exact science, coroners office investigations supervisor Rick Jones said. Theres a lot of hard work behind it.
Murphys decision to put images of the unidentified people online, along with a coroners office in Fulton County, Ga., led to the founding of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, commonly known as NamUs, Murphy said.
NamUs compares family reports of missing persons with police reports of unidentified bodies.
We got much more sophisticated about what we did, Murphy said. We put todays science to yesterdays cases.
A federal grant in 2009 allowed the coroners office to exhume 54 bodies from the county cemetery for identification.
The exhumations began in 2010 and lasted 18 months while the coroners office retrieved DNA samples and other data, such as fingerprints if available, from the bodies.
... As for the first unidentified girl entered into the cold case online program, the coroners office might finally have a lead.
The sister of an out-of-state runaway who went missing in 1971 thinks Jane Arroyo Grande Doe is her sister.
She was the one that really sparked my interest in unidentified folks, Jones said. Shes somebodys child out there, and thats what we look at. Hopefully some day we can get this little girl identified.
Each Doe is assigned a unique middle name. This woman was discovered at Craig Ranch Golf Course. Her name: Jane Golfers Doe. Its the only thing that separates her from the more than 200 cold cases buried in various cemeteries throughout Clark County.
But there is one Doe with an extended family.
The family is in the persons of John Williams and his wife. He places flowers on a grave, remembering a bond that has lasted 35 years.
Williams has been watching out for Jane Arroyo Grande Doe since the day he found her body while serving as a Henderson police officer.
"I was on my day off, Williams remembers. It was a Sunday, October 5, 1980."
It was 9:20 p.m. along a once-dirt road near the Arroyo Grande Wash.
"Nothing was incorporated out there at the time," Williams says. "She was laying there, posed basically, and nude."
Williams saw the different faces of death.
"She had been struck numerous times in the face, apparently with fists. And then in the back of the head with what appeared to be a roofing or framing hammer. And then stabbed with a two-pronged instrument in the back."
The case tugged at his heart.
"Obviously I felt very sad for her," he says.
The attachment has lasted into his retirement from the force.
"She was a young lady, 14 to 18 years old, Williams says. It's just like, who could do this?"
From the moment he discovered her body, Williams has dedicated his life to finding justice for Jane Arroyo Grande Doe.
"We have done everything. We have done everything."
On the anniversary of her death each year, and on holidays, Williams and his wife place flowers at her grave.
"In fact we put some on the other day. We come down all the time and put flowers. Just so that she has someone that cares about her."
The Williams family even bought a gravestone for her final resting place.
"And why is that important? It's important to me. She's like family to me."
But to this day, she still does not have a name. Her identification is unknown.
"I would really, really like to find out who this youngster is."
He wasnt the only one. Former Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy also is interested in finding out who she was.
"Jane Arroyo Grande Doe was one of the reasons we started our Cold Case Project to begin with," Murphy says.
In 2002, Jane Arroyo Grande and dozens of other Does were exhumed to gather new clues, hoping advanced technology might help solve some of these mysteries.
"We continue to identify old, and cold cases, and cases that we thought couldn't be done, Murphy says. And we have never identified her."
The mystery of Jane Arroyo Grande Doe has become a symbol.
__________________________
Cold cases go online, with respect for victims - By Abigail Goldman - Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.
An unsolved case, 27 years cold, sits on Clark County death investigator Rick Jones desk. He flips through it every day, and sometimes on the weekend, because he cant shake two simple facts: Jane Arroyo Grande Doe makes him think of his own daughter, just as someone out there must still be thinking of Jane Arroyo Grande Doe.
In July, the Justice Department launched a Web site that allows anyone to search through photos of Americas unidentified dead, carefully cropped images compiled from coroners and medical examiners across the country. The site, called NamUs after the federal National Missing and Unidentified Persons Initiative, is an sign of just how much public opinion has changed. When Murphy launched a local version of the same online identification concept in 2003, he took considerable criticism from colleagues who thought it was too morose, too disrespectful of the dead.
Then his office identified 29 bodies.
Now the Justice Department is developing a missing persons component to the NamUs site. The goal is to create a public database of missing people, then cross-reference it with the unidentified remains on record, in the hope that each match will close two cases at once. The government is trying to get this done by 2009. Murphy, who has been closely involved with the creation of NamUs, said it could take years.
Arroyo Grande Doe is one of the cases that now lives online, unresolved.
Death investigators estimate she was 14 to 20 years old when she was discovered about 9 on an October night nearly three decades ago, nude and face down in the desert near what is now the intersection of the Las Vegas Beltway and the street that became her name: Arroyo Grande Boulevard. Her photo, the one they can show online, reveals nothing of her homicide: blunt trauma to the head, stab wounds to the back. Her fingerprints and X-rays are still in the coroners case file, but shes long since been buried in Henderson, under a headstone that says Jane Doe, Oct. 5, 1980. From your family at the Henderson Police Department.
And Jones, sitting in his cramped cubicle in the coroners office, still flips through her file, scanning for something he can hold on to.
Jane Sahara Sue Doe, for example, was discovered in 1979 outside what was then the El Rancho casino parking lot, a homicide victim with an unusual feature: Though she was only 17 to 21 years old, she had a complete set of dentures.
In years of searching national records, investigators have come across only one other missing woman that matched Sahara Sue Does profile a woman in Reno. It seemed as if that had to be her, so in 2003 they exhumed Sahara Sue, only to find out the DNA didnt match.
Considering about 120 unidentified bodies are rolled through the Clark County Coroners office every year, with the vast majority identified within a matter of days, Sahara Sue is an exception to the rule. Still, she weighs on Murphys staff, just like all the others.
.... And DNA isnt everything, either. Sometimes matches just dont exist, and the death investigators are left to their lonely legwork. Jones has spent hours scouring online missing persons sites, looking for someone who resembles Arroyo Grande Doe. Other Clark County death investigators have formed a cold case unit, a group that reviews the old files in its spare time.
And for all this work, even when you get an identification, its a hollow victory.
Hollow because the thrill of putting a name to a case, Jones said, is quickly undercut by the task of telling someone his friend or family member is dead.
Some coroners use the word closure, but Murphys office doesnt. Murphy doesnt think his staff provides closure. So instead they say resolution and hope it heals more than hurts.
But theres an optimism in the coroners office, one that employees have to cling to if theyre going to last, Murphy said. So maybe Jones will find the third sister. Maybe Jane Arroyo Grande Doe will be identified. And even if she isnt, maybe thats OK for now.
I often wonder why shes the case that kind of started it all, and yet shes the one that weve yet to identify, Murphy said. I dont know if well ever know who she is, but I know a whole bunch of folks have found homes as a result of her case, as a result of a case where we wanted to put a young lady to rest.
___________________________For more than two decades, a teenager found naked, stabbed and beaten in Henderson has been known only as Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe.
Also known as No. 80-1221, the girl's body was discovered in 1980 near what is now the intersection of Interstate 215 and Arroyo Grande Boulevard in Henderson.
Authorities exhausted leads to find her identity years ago. That doesn't mean, however, that they have stopped trying.
"Our goal in this office is to identify every body," Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said.
...Richard Jones, an investigator with the Clark County coroner's office who also works with the cold case unit, has been trying to find the identity of Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe for more than five years.
One of the best leads came in 2003 when he was searching through databases of missing persons and came across a photo of Rachel Garden, who had been missing since 1980.
Although she looked strikingly similar to the unidentified girl, officials discovered after contacting police and checking dental records that it was not a match.
"Somebody someday will identify her," Jones said.
2004-01-22 04:00:00 PDT Las Vegas -- Her naked corpse was discovered by accident by a pair of brothers more than 23 years ago along a dirt road on the edge of town. She looked like a teen, perhaps no older than 18, possibly a runaway. Her head was beaten with a hammer, but the coroner believes she actually died from stabbings of an unidentified 3-inch object.
The murder weapon isn't the only thing that remains unidentified. All these years later, the victim is still known only as Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe, after the desolate desert path where her body had been dumped.
Over the decades, that path became a major interstate and the young officer who arrived on the scene became a seasoned veteran. But every effort by Detective John Williams to identify what he calls "my girl," including exhuming her body last year to gather DNA samples, have brought him no closer to closing the most vexing case of his career.
Now, in a controversial move, the coroner here is taking the search for answers to nagging cases like this to the Internet by posting, in what is believed to be a national first, the photos of dozens of unidentified bodies on the Clark County coroner's Web site.
Several coroner and medical examiner Web sites around the United States publish information about so-called "cold cases," and some even accompany the blurbs with artists' renderings or clay-model representations that approximate what the deceased looked like when alive. But at www.accessclarkcounty.net, a prominent box beseeches visitors to "help identify human remains." A few clicks -- and a couple of warnings about graphic content -- later, the screen is filled with thumbnail-size pictures that can be enlarged to show actual shots of dead people.
The warning states that "no decomposed remains will be shown," and some of the photos have been retouched to erase the more gruesome trauma. But many remain difficult to view.
.... "I just don't know if actual photos are the best way to accomplish this," said Sgt. Mike Harper, operations manager for the Alameda County coroner's office in Oakland. "A good description of the Doe and the circumstances would probably be just as beneficial as having a photo. If the photo is a clean shot of the face, maybe that's OK, but I don't think there's a need to go into the grotesque end of things."
... Yet Clark County says its approach is working. Since the launch in November, the site has received more than 350,000 hits and has helped identify as many as a dozen people, said Assistant Coroner Les Elliot.
... "It's something we're exploring at this point to see if it's feasible," said Herb Hawley of the San Francisco County medical examiner's office. "I don't believe we'll be putting up actual photos. The most we would do is put up sketches."
But Todd Matthews of the Doe Network, a national organization of volunteers and aggrieved relatives searching for missing loved ones, said he supports the effort.
"They're showing reality, and sometimes it's hard to hide this reality from the public," Matthews said. "They're definitely bringing some attention to cases that otherwise have not seen the light of day for years."
Williams, still trying to bring justice to Jane "Arroyo Grande" Doe, holds out hope that Matthews is right and someone will someday help resolve his case.
"If you look on TV, you'll see worse than what you see in this photo of my girl," Williams said. "If it's my daughter, I'd definitely feel bad to see a picture of her dead. But it would not bother me if someone saw it on the Internet or TV to give me some closure and my family some closure. I'm sure things will offend people, but so be it. You got a young kid, dumped in the desert. That's more offensive."
She was found dumped alongside Arroyo Grande Boulevard in Henderson almost 23 years ago.
The victim was a young woman, probably in her late teens, with blue eyes and feathered brown hair. Investigators determined she had been raped, hit on the head and stabbed multiple times in the back, but they never determined her name.
Now investigators hope technology that wasn't available in 1980 might help them identify the girl who has been known as Jane Arroyo Grande Doe.
When homicide victims remain unidentified it not only leaves family and friends without knowledge of their fate, it also means that a killer may be at large. Without knowing the identity of a victim, it is usually impossible for police to determine who killed that person.
A detective who had been haunted by the Arroyo Grande case for years thought he might have a lead on who the young woman was, so her body was exhumed Thursday from Palm Mortuary in Henderson. Coroner's investigators obtained better dental X-rays and a DNA sample, and she was returned to her grave Monday morning.
About 20 Henderson officers attended Monday's brief service at the mortuary. They stood with their heads bowed under a tent, gathered around the young woman's gray casket and asked for God's help in finding out who she was.
"We recommit her spirit to you," Henderson police chaplain Gary Morefield said during a prayer at the service. "We hope you help reveal the identity of this person that you care about very much."
The young woman was found the night of Sunday, Oct. 5, 1980, on Arroyo Grande near Lake Mead Boulevard, which is now Interstate 215.
She didn't carry any identification. She doesn't appear to be from the Las Vegas area; no one fitting her description was reported missing from Henderson or the surrounding area around that time. Her fingerprints didn't match those of any missing people entered in a national database.
In a short article that ran in the Las Vegas Sun at the time, police asked for the public's help in identifying the victim. No one ever came forward with information, police said. Two weeks later, police released a sketch of her. She remained nameless, but she wasn't forgotten.
....In the past few months, Williams learned that Jane Arroyo Grande Doe might be a runaway from Reno, Chambers said. That led to the exhumation, which was one of the last official acts of Ron Flud, who retired Friday after 19 years as coroner. Investigators were soon disappointed with the news that she wasn't the missing girl from Reno, however. Another possible match was also ruled out. Now they are trying to determine if she could be one of two runaways from the East Coast who disappeared around the same time the body was discovered.
As of this morning investigators had not determined whether Jane Arroyo Grande Doe was one of those runaways.
It's "very unusual" for the coroner's office to exhume a body, Clark County's new coroner, Michael Murphy, said.
"We normally would not do that unless we had reason to believe we could get a match," he said. "We are not going to arbitrarily exhume John or Jane Does to get DNA samples. While it's solid technology, it's still new technology and it's being stretched to the limit with current cases."
....In the Arroyo Grande case, Murphy said he believes there is a good possibility that investigators will eventually identify her.
"How good of a possibility? I am kind of the eternal optimist," Murphy said. "Good solid investigative work will ultimately prevail."
Just noticed something...she had a vaccination scar on left bicep.
Just out of curiosity could that narrow a year (her age) that vaccinations in that manner were common and if it was prone in a certain area of U.S.?
I have one on the left portion of my back next to shoulder blade. I was born in TX in 1962...then moved to NJ in 1965. I am not sure when I would have gotten it but how many of you on this site have a vaccination scar?
Any chance that could be helpful?
Thanks Roselvr...I've been looking around and it seems the vaccination stopped around 1971 (so that doesn't help much!) and there were different spots (thighs as well) but haven't seen much for where mine is located! But it won't narrow anything down for AGJD, I believe!
Nice to meet someone from Jersey! I live in Ohio now and miss many things about Jersey!
I also have the vaccination on the upper left arm, born in the early 1960s and went to school in a Midwestern state. We got ours at elementary school-lined up by grade level and class, then 2 nurses from the state board of health went down the line and vaccinated everyone. Then we got into a second, separate line where 2 other nurses would use an eyedropper to drop some sort of yellow liquid medicine on a sugar cube and we got to eat the sugar cube. Only one sugar cube per student, one nurse kept telling us because of course we wanted several sugar cubes.
I'm from NJ, mine is in the same spot as hers. There's a NY Marine John Doe that appears to have one there too. I'm not sure how they chose where to put the vax but its intersting yours is in a different spot. Hopefully others will say where their's are
My mom has passed away, but I'm certain I didn't have the small pox vaccine. In college, I had to show my vaccination records one year, and it wasn't on it.
Did they give it to babies and toddlers? From what I've read, most got their shots in elementary school. If that's the case, I would have been in kindergarten or first grade when they stopped giving the vaccine, so maybe we just missed it? I know my mom did everything Dr. Spock said to do when we were little, so if he'd said to make sure we had it, she would have, LOL. Goodness knows I had every other required shot.Always embarrassing logging in the next day to see spelling errors made from not having my glasses on lol
John "1st Force Recon Marine" Doe find a grave link
Wonder why your mom decided not to have it done for you and your sister.
Did they give it to babies and toddlers? From what I've read, most got their shots in elementary school. If that's the case, I would have been in kindergarten or first grade when they stopped giving the vaccine, so maybe we just missed it? I know my mom did everything Dr. Spock said to do when we were little, so if he'd said to make sure we had it, she would have, LOL. Goodness knows I had every other required shot.
Always embarrassing logging in the next day to see spelling errors made from not having my glasses on lol
John "1st Force Recon Marine" Doe find a grave link
Wonder why your mom decided not to have it done for you and your sister.
Other body markings show he had a smallpox vaccine which were discontinued in the US in 1972. They were not recommended for children under 1 year old age when they were given. So if that circular mark, on the far right, is indeed a smallpox vaccine scar it is likely he was born prior to 1971. That would have made him at least 26. It has also been mentioned that this vaccine is given prior to deployments, so it could be related to that and not his childhood vaccinations which could make him younger.