CO CO - Gilpin Co., WhtFem, 25-30, burned, off Hwy 119, overbite, Sep'52

Ms Suzanne

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Has this Unidentified Jane Doe been put on here? Has she been identified? I would really like to find out who she is. Is there any more information or newspaper articles on her?

November 30, 2013, 3:30 pm
Woman’s charred skeleton found under funeral pyre near Black Hawk
By Kirk Mitchell The Denver Post Kirk Mitchell


It was one of Colorado’s biggest unsolved murder mysteries of the 1950s.

Jane Doe, funeral pyre victim


Who placed a log on top of a woman and torched her body in Gilpin County? It came to be known as the pyre case.

More on the link

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcas...-on-pyre-hidden-in-gilpin-county-forest/7534/
 
Quote
Six months later, a Nederland woman who knew Damoth came forward and told authorities she had seen Damoth’s pickup truck near the location of the funeral pyre on Sept. 10, roughly the time that Jane Doe was murdered.


Who was that woman (Nederland woman)? Did they look into her further for any involvement? They did find an a third earring.
 
Days later, a woman identified only as Mrs. Frank Heitman of 4601 W. Alameda, drove up to the pyre site to explore the scene for herself. While she was there she found a three-foot stick with blood on it, a small piece of burned leather and an earring that was not burned.

sbm from the Post article.
Seems Mrs. Heitman would make a great websleuths member lol
 
Interesting sketch of her skull as well as the restoration.

I vaguely remember this case from when I was growing up -- it happened before I was born but there was some talk around Bozeman, Montana wondering whether it was a woman missing from there. But that woman was located in Washington state.
 
Interesting sketch of her skull as well as the restoration.

I vaguely remember this case from when I was growing up -- it happened before I was born but there was some talk around Bozeman, Montana wondering whether it was a woman missing from there. But that woman was located in Washington state.

It would be interesting to see what could be done with today's technology. Or Carl lol It sounds like the buck teeth would be helpful knowledge. I wonder if they could exhume her for x-rays and possible dna.
 
I found a few possibilities. None from the year of the murder, but some from a couple of years before. I went back to 1949.

Jean Spangler, who went missing from LA in October 1949? The teeth caught my eye. (see first attachment) She left in mysterious circumstances but was thought to have been seen alive several months later. Her listing on Charley doesn't have any stats:

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/spangler_jean.html
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/436dfca.html

Lillian DeMaris is probably too small:

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/d/demaris_lillian.html

Mimi Boomhower is quite a bit older than the UID is thought to be, but she had a taste for glittery jewelry and has a certain facial resemblance (see second attachment):

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/boomhower_mimi.html

Mabel Chambers looks like she might also have a funky bite. She has a fair resemblance through the chin and jaw (third attachment):

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/11013/1/

Floradean Walker matches on stats -- 5'7" and 25-27 years old. She's thought to have gone missing in 1951 or thereabouts but the exact date is apparently unknown. (Fourth attachment.)

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/8609/3/
 

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  • pyre murder victim and mabel chambers.jpg
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Great job, carbuff! Boy, that is one horrific overbite in the artists rendition of the skull.
We were actually going to go to Nederland today for Frozen Dead Guy Days, but we got slammed with a storm and I'm too chicken to drive in this weather. lol. Since my son is bitterly disappointed, we are going to go stay with friends in the area when the weather clears up. I will ask my old boss what he's heard about this case. He had a restaurant in Black Hawk for about 40 years, and is now in Nederland. I'm really curious about the lady from Ned that pointed the finger at Damoth. I wonder why she waited 6 months to report seeing him. I wonder if that was her earring they found.
 
Great job, carbuff! Boy, that is one horrific overbite in the artists rendition of the skull.
We were actually going to go to Nederland today for Frozen Dead Guy Days, but we got slammed with a storm and I'm too chicken to drive in this weather. lol. Since my son is bitterly disappointed, we are going to go stay with friends in the area when the weather clears up. I will ask my old boss what he's heard about this case. He had a restaurant in Black Hawk for about 40 years, and is now in Nederland. I'm really curious about the lady from Ned that pointed the finger at Damoth. I wonder why she waited 6 months to report seeing him. I wonder if that was her earring they found.

I agree.I was thinking it was her earring too. Did they question her real good. I wonder who she was.
 
The Blackhawk case was never solved and the identity of the victim was never learned. Two Denver men, Dr. Charles G. Grover, a dentist, and Patrolman Dexter F. Landau, reconstructed the victim's head from strands of black hair, bits of bone and a few teeth and the head was shown on television across the nation.
http://www.silviapettem.com/JANE DOE articles/4-9-54PostSlaying.html
SBM
So apparently this had national attention at the time. Not that everyone had TVs back then. It makes me a bit discouraged that they had no luck 62 years ago when there were still people alive who knew this poor girl. I wonder where her remains are. Maybe if there's a lot of public interest, they can exhume her and do testing. I know they can test teeth to determine where someone lived...
 
The Blackhawk case was never solved and the identity of the victim was never learned. Two Denver men, Dr. Charles G. Grover, a dentist, and Patrolman Dexter F. Landau, reconstructed the victim's head from strands of black hair, bits of bone and a few teeth and the head was shown on television across the nation.
http://www.silviapettem.com/JANE DOE articles/4-9-54PostSlaying.html
SBM
So apparently this had national attention at the time. Not that everyone had TVs back then. It makes me a bit discouraged that they had no luck 62 years ago when there were still people alive who knew this poor girl. I wonder where her remains are. Maybe if there's a lot of public interest, they can exhume her and do testing. I know they can test teeth to determine where someone lived...

Some discrepancies in that article -- the Denver Post article says 25-30 years of age; this one says 17. The sketch and description say strawberry blonde but the article describes the dentist and patrolman working with strands of black hair.
 
Some discrepancies in that article -- the Denver Post article says 25-30 years of age; this one says 17. The sketch and description say strawberry blonde but the article describes the dentist and patrolman working with strands of black hair.

I think the article on Sylvia's site is describing two different unidentified women. The Blackhawk pyre victim, who is the topic of this thread, was believed to be 25-30 years old and had black hair.
Then the article mentions a Boulder Canyon female victim that was 17 years old and had strawberry blonde hair. I wonder if she is still a UID?
 
Some discrepancies in that article -- the Denver Post article says 25-30 years of age; this one says 17. The sketch and description say strawberry blonde but the article describes the dentist and patrolman working with strands of black hair.

That's what I thought too, carbuff, so I reread it. They're talking about 2 different cases-the 25 yr old black haired girl was the BH Doe, the 17 yr old strawberry blond is the Boulder Doe, now known as Dorothy Gay Howard.

Since the police didn't think Demoth was the killer, I wonder if she was a victim of Dot's killer, thought to be Harvey Glatman, as well. He was in Colorado at the time.

Oops I should have refreshed lol.
 
I think the article on Sylvia's site is describing two different unidentified women. The Blackhawk pyre victim, who is the topic of this thread, was believed to be 25-30 years old and had black hair.
Then the article mentions a Boulder Canyon female victim that was 17 years old and had strawberry blonde hair. I wonder if she is still a UID?

She's the one that Silvia helped id, wintermute. Check out her website for a lot of info on Dot, and articles archived going back to 1954. It's well done. http://www.boulderjanedoe.com/index.html
 

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