SEP 12, 2021
Investigators plan to exhume, identify remains found more than 33 years ago in Yakima County | Thevanished | yakimaherald.com
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Back in 1988, Shaw stood on a car to photograph the scene where she was found. After lying there for an estimated four to 10 months, only her skeleton remained. She was 4-foot-11 to 5-foot-1, with black hair approximately 12 inches long. Petite clothing remained on her frame.
“She was not a big lady. She was quite small, maybe 120 pounds,” Shaw said. Investigators initially thought she could be 20 to 30 years old — later estimating 30 to 40 years old — and weren’t sure if she was Native or Hispanic. Her teeth showed no signs of dental work.
“Her head was slightly lower than her feet. I did tip the body over slightly to check and see if there was any dried blood underneath or a weapon, and there wasn’t anything,” he said. “It appeared to me she had been killed elsewhere and placed there.”
They call her
Parker Doe because she lay near the unincorporated Lower Yakima Valley town of Parker. Curtice wants to exhume her from a cemetery west of Yakima as soon as possible. Because of drastic advances in DNA technology, he is closer than ever to being able to identify her and return Doe to her family — goals since he became coroner in 2019.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Curtice said. “I’m waiting on the cost. As soon as they come up with a cost, we’ll set a date.”
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Because of where she was found, investigators think Doe was murdered. Two other women’s bodies were discovered in the Parker area months before.
In 1987, a paroled rapist who had moved from Texas to Yakima the previous fall terrorized women familiar with the
city’s rough late-night scene. His name was
John Bill Fletcher Jr., and DNA evidence tied him to the rape and stabbing deaths of Theresa Branscomb, 20, and Bertha Cantu, 26, in separate attacks in 1987. Their bodies were found in the Parker area. Branscomb’s remains lay in an orchard about a mile west from where Doe was found and Cantu at the end of the dirt road, almost to the river. Both were last seen in downtown Yakima.
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Her skeleton is believed to rest in an unmarked grave at
West Hills Memorial Park outside Yakima. Her clothing is in evidence at the sheriff’s office, which is handling the homicide investigation. Her skull was transferred to the
King County Medical Examiner’s Office in Seattle after years of storage
at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where it was taken for a clay reconstruction in the 1980s.
Authorities have never extracted Doe’s DNA and know they must, said Detective Sgt. Jason Pepper, head of detectives at the sheriff’s office.
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Doe wore lavender pants, a long-sleeved lavender shirt with a label in Spanish, and argyle socks with lavender tones. Investigators think she was pulled out of a vehicle by her arms or armpits because her head was farthest from the dirt road. Because her feet were closest to it, her brown shoes were what Shaw saw first.
They were unique. One sole was black, the other white, with grooves in both.
“She’s wearing bowling shoes,” Shaw said. Performance bowling shoes are made with different soles for each foot.
He took Doe’s shoes to the bowling alleys in Toppenish and Wapato. Employees couldn’t identify them, Shaw said. There were also bowling alleys in Sunnyside and Yakima.
But he doesn’t think Doe was a bowler.
“A bowler would have never worn bowling shoes as street shoes,” he said. She may have bought them at a yard sale, borrowed or got them from someone else.
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Authorities originally said Doe was of Hispanic descent, up to the point Blair presented the clay reconstruction of her skull. Then, they believed she was Native American. But they still don’t know for sure.
Doe’s DNA would answer that question, said Judd Towell, who retired in January as head of detectives at the sheriff’s office. ...
“We need the DNA to push it. You can’t go much further at this point. We’ve got to have some proof — is she Native? Is she Hispanic? That’s what we need to know,” Towell said in January.
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A search of NamUs cases of missing Native, Hispanic or mixed-race women in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and California shows two other Native women missing at that time, one from California and the other a woman from Montana. But neither matches the description.
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An autopsy by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office did not determine the cause of Doe’s death, said the Yakima County coroner at the time, Leonard Birkinbine. He classified her cause of death as undetermined and that’s still the case. But the manner of her death is presumed to be homicide.
Her skeleton was intact except for a few bones in her right hand. Her hyoid bone was also missing. ...
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