Identified! AR- West Memphis -"Laundry Lady" WhtFem 643UFAR, 45-60, Sep'87 No Name Available

[Beamie]

Still nothing huh?

 

[deca]

If you notice the size of the bottles the Tide box and the detergent are odd. I am using the dollar bill as the scale. It looks to me like the small packs that are given away at shelters, churches, colleges and food pantries. Often they get a large donation of smaller sizes or they buy a pallet of stuff to give away for their charity work.

Looked through Oregon missing and haven't come up with anything significant but really, she could have gotten that shirt from somewhere else.

 

[reasypeasy]

I've been thinking about her bag of stuff. So many questions.

Toothpaste... a well used tube. Shampoo. No toothbrush. Does she aim to buy a toothbrush, or does she have one at the place she was visiting? How long did she intend to be there? How long had she been there? If she was there long enough to need to take her shampoo and toothpaste with her was she there long enough to need more than just a bag of laundry supplies? If her clothes are drying, why couldn't she stay there until the clothes were dry... is it because they are being line-dried? If she intends to return for the clothes why is she taking her laundry supplies away with her now?

Laundry detergent. No laundry. Is her laundry in a washing machine or drying on a line somewhere?

Hand cream. Was she washing things by hand? Why couldn't she do that at home? If she doesn't have a home why isn't she hanging out near her clothes instead, waiting for them to dry?

So many questions.

 

[reasypeasy]

Also, the recon reminds me of Mary Louise McCullar.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mccullar_mary.html
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/844dfca.html

This would fit, if her husband dumped her somewhere alive and she decided to get herself well away, live outside of the formal economy and leave no traces. She's a little younger than the target age range, but other than that it all fits well enough.

 

[killarney rose]

I just now saw this thread and due to time involved have only read every other page. This is my take.

LL is a transient.
The shirt most likely came to her used and the club printed on it means nothing.
I believe the items in her bag came from a) a truck stop B) a shelter or C) a convienence store.

IMO coming from one of these places would explain why they are of an unusal (smaller) size and name brand.

If she had been riding with a trucker, it's possible he stopped at one of the truck stops to shower, eat, and do laundry, or even to sleep in his truck and she might have been doing one or all of these things while he slept. When she never returned, he left w/o her never knowing her fate. OR, maybe he let her off there and went on his way.

I'm familiar with the big truck stops as I spent 2 weeks on the road with my son and his wife when they were team drivers . These truck stops have everything the drivers need on the road away from home. We'd stop, shower, do laundry etc.

So-

LL could have been showering and doing laundry and walked away from the truck stop. Her clothing could've been back at the truck stop being laundered but she took the items in the bag with her rather than leave them because she was afraid of them getting stolen.

If she were only showering, she would have still had the items with her for the same reason.


As for the dentures/toothpaste-

My husbands step mother wore dentures and only took them out to brush them with a reagular toothbrush and tothpaste and back in they went- she never soaked them.

Also, if LL were on the road and had no toothbrush only toothpaste, perhaps she held them under a faucet and rubbed them with her fingers with toothpaste.

And maybe her toothbrush was knocked away from her on impact of the accident.


Just throwing my thoughts out after skimming through the thread.

 

[dotr]

Agreed. So is Colgate. You can buy knock off stuff much, much cheaper. But even a quarter counts. When you are broke, every penny makes a difference. Name brands are not consistent with a transient person.



I agree.

The white thing appears to be a bar of soap. This is a guess as I cannot see it well.

There is a brush in a wrapper at the very bottom. It looks as if it's new.



I thought perhaps something happened to the paste upon impact. Or that it was somehow effected in this manner. It looked like it may have exploded out the end but again hard to tell.


This all then led me to think of another scenario. What if she had escaped a bad relationship/a person/left their life and was setting up shop somewhere and needed the basics. Or she had just moved into the area for whatever reason? How often do you need ALL of the essentials while shopping unless moving? I never run out of all essentials and a few luxury but useful household items at the same time. What plausible scenarios would this happen? Moving was all that came to mind.

Moving was one of the first things to come to mind- I pictured someone going back somewhere.. to pick up the "last of the bathroom stuff", throwing out everything oldish, but keeping the near full toothpaste (unless it lost some volume on impact)
The uid does not appear to me to be transient in the usual homeless sense
-she may be a housekeeper with her employers on vacation, or a motel worker bringing home things left behind in a room.

 

[Spotlight]

There is a toothbrush, if you look at the rectangle shaped object at the top right of this picture

https://identifyus.org/en/medias/full/1983

you will see one of these

http://www.gapyeartravelstore.com/Travel-Toothbrush-Set-p-401.html

It is a travel toothbrush, I was given one on a long flight once, the toothbrush head slots into the handle and you have the box to keep the toothbrush clean when not in use. The toothpaste is a regular size tube rather than the sample size that would come with the travel toothbrush set.

 

[Fairy1]

This case just stays with me. I have re-read the entire thread and have some thoughts.....

The North Service Road appears to be much further west of the cluster of motels/truck stops at the interchange than I thought. It also appears to be much further from Broadway - where the Nic Nac is located - than I would have thought. This has me wondering, if she was staying closer to where she was killed, why would she have been at the Nic Nac? She could have done her laundry and/or visited a bar much closer to that location. Then again, if she was staying closer to the Nic Nac, why would she have been up on the North Service Road?

The case file states the bag of supplies was found near the victim. It also states she was thrown 150 feet. Is it possible these items didn't belong to LL? OTOH, perhaps she had other belongings that were never located or associated with her?

Why would LL have stayed in this area for a week unless she had a reason. And a place to stay. If she regularly hitched rides with truckers, she could have left at any time. Did she have a reason to stay? Family or friends? Someone who was used to her coming and going and wouldn't have been concerned if she didn't come back this time?

If the bag of supplies was LL's and that is a toothbrush, would it be possible to do a DNA test on that rather than attempt to get the green light for exhumation?

I have come to believe this is not Rosie Baker. I just don't think Rosie would have stayed out of contact from her children so long - particularly with a new grandbaby. I do feel she was murdered by her husband.

 

[Shamrocker99]

Strangely it seems that she was removed from identifyus.com because the links go nowhere--could it be that she was identified??

 

[webrocket]

she's still unidentified:

https://identifyus.org/cases/2882

 

[Shamrocker99]

Thank you!! The old links must not be attached to her current listing there!!

 

[Jan]

In the reconstruction picture it looks like she has brown eyes. In the Namus file it says her eyes are hazel. She couldn't have been too poor if she had full dentures because dentures and dental care aren't cheap and often aren't covered by insurance. It seems very sad to me that someone hasn't missed her and been looking for her. Someone in the area must have seen her in the days before she died. I wonder how well publicized the search for her identity was.

 

[honesty]

I keep wondering how she kept her dentures affixed. They do not just stay in on their own. Having been around a lot of people with dentures and partials I know they need a denture adhesive in order to keep them in place. As for the toothbrush and paste, people with dentures do brush between cleanings. So that doesnt bother me, except that if regular paste is used, It could cause abrasions on the teeth and gum paste leaving scratches and places for bacteria to grow. I do not know about when LL became deceased, but I know these days there is special tooth paste for dentures, and other dental work that will not cause harm to the expensive work.

 

[DrDMike]

Not sure if this helps or not, but I carry both a toothbrush and look laundry detergent in my car. I am fanatical about keeping my teeth clean plus I deal with a lot of people at work and don't want bad breath. I have detergent in my car because I do my weekly laundry on my lunch break at the laundromat.
Anyways, I don't like the truck stop theory because why would she trust her belongings with a random stranger? I wonder if she lived in some transient camp. It would explain a lot.

 

[DrDMike]

In the reconstruction picture it looks like she has brown eyes. In the Namus file it says her eyes are hazel. She couldn't have been too poor if she had full dentures because dentures and dental care aren't cheap and often aren't covered by insurance. It seems very sad to me that someone hasn't missed her and been looking for her. Someone in the area must have seen her in the days before she died. I wonder how well publicized the search for her identity was.

Or her dentist did work for her pro bono.

 

[DrDMike]

Do they know who hit her? If not, then I would think that it wasn't an accident but a murder. Maybe the person who hit her was the person that she was living with.

 

[MDC1]

Sadly, known only to God,
gone but never forgotten,
Merry Christmas in Heaven!

 

[CarlK90245]

:bump: for revision to my laundry lady recon.

 

[dotr]

What is that little white rectangular thing next to the toothpaste in the photo?

That's odd. In the photo of her possessions there's a tube of toothpaste but no brush, and she has shampoo but no washcloth, towel or bar of soap. Could these personal care items might have been given out at a women's shelter?

It seems unlikely that a transient would spend money on fabric softener. The other items are all essentials, with the possible exception of the skin lotion.

Is anyone familiar with the area where she was found? Is it near any laundromats or motels that might have had laundry facilities? It seems odd that she didn't have any other clothes other than the ones she was wearing. I wonder if a motel manager found the clothes still in a washing machine or dryer but didn't know the woman's body was found nearby.

Just realized that early September is of course usually the start of school.
Many college students moving out for the first time, they remember to bring a toothbrush and manage to fill the fridge with the usual goodies, but who thinks/ or cares about replenishing, boring and costly cleaning supplies? Mom does!
Maybe this lady was running over with a few items for one of her kids, maybe the uid was even a student herself at one of the colleges in the area?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden_County,_Arkansas#Postsecondary_education

 

[Fairy1]

Bringing NamUs profile forward ***WARNING - GRAPHIC PHOTO UPON OPENING***:

https://identifyus.org/cases/2882

What do you all think of Betty Marie Roberts?

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/r/roberts_betty.html

She had dentures, hazel eyes and would have been within the age range. Only problem I see is that Betty had a tattoo of the name "Jeff" when she went missing in 1959.