Identified! CA - Stanislaus Co., Female body in canal, Sep'71 - Mary Alice Willey

[CaliKid]

I wish there was a national database to upload DNA evidence of people who have disappeared. Every missing person, no matter what the reason, should be reported.

 

[Fairy1]

I found this very interesting follow-up story on Mary Alice. Thought you might enjoy more details and a picture of this beautiful girl in life. It's a good (but sad) example of how people can go missing and have no one looking for them....

http://www.modbee.com/columnists/jardine/story/455798.html

 

[MagicRose99]

Wow... she really did lose direction at the end... Haight-Ashbury, ex-cons, cons... it truly is a sad story.

 

[kpdx]

looks like UID was recently identified...

http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com/topic/1156/t/Stanislaus-County-Ca-Jane-Doe-1971.html

 

[badhorsie]

I thought she was ID'd but didn't like to say (I am English:crazy
Glad she has a name though, what a pretty girl she was, I hope the perp is brought to justice

 

[Salem]

This UID has been identified as Mary Alice Willey.

http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com/topic/1156/t/Stanislaus-County-Ca-Jane-Doe-1971.html

Salem

 

[Cubby]

WS member DebbS was able to provide a link in the thread for missing Lisa Smith this UID was in fact id'd. Thanks a bunch DebbS!

Here is the link to DebbS' post with the info from the Lisa Smith thread.

Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Lisa Smith- CA Santa Rosa March 14, 1971




Here is a direct link indicating this UID found in September of 1971 was id'd. (article from 2008)

Her name remained a mystery for 37 years.​

But once that was solved, it became clear that 23-year-old Mary Alice Willey packed lots of intrigue into her short life.
Willey's body, found riddled with stab wounds in the Delta-Mendota Canal in western Stanislaus County on Sept. 11, 1971, was exhumed in April. She remained a Jane Doe until DNA confirmed her identity a little more than a week ago​

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2008/10/08/455798/intriguing-details-emerge-on-1971.html#ixzz1W0hopDIH
​

 

[Redwood146]

wow - I find it hard to believe someone could live such a life. I feel for her parents, not knowing what had happened to her for so long.

 

[Cubby]

Another article about Mary Alice. Thanks to DebbS

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/24/MNU217OU14.DTL

I do pray answers are found in her case and the person or persons responsible are brought to justice.

Prayers for her family and all who loved her as well.

 

[OkieGranny]

Feature article from May 2009:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Idealist-s-slaying-in-71-still-haunts-today-3297246.php

Mary Alice Willey arrived in San Francisco in 1969. She was 21 years old, the product of a conservative Southern California family, newly divorced and ready to experience life in the free-wheeling Haight-Ashbury district.

She rented an attic apartment and enrolled at San Francisco State, where she eagerly participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War sit-ins and demonstrations. Then Mary Alice discovered the black power movement.

She became a strident devotee of George Jackson, the charismatic but militant San Quentin inmate who had gained international fame for his best-selling prison classic, "Soledad Brother." She wrote letters to Black Panther Johnny Spain, who was also incarcerated at San Quentin. And she began associating with members of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers that would become implicated in the Aug. 29, 1971, killing of a police officer at San Francisco's Ingleside Station. There is reason to believe that Mary Alice may have played a role in the attack and the slaying of Sgt. John V. Young.

But less than two weeks after the attack on Ingleside Station, Mary Alice disappeared, never to be heard from again. Thirty-seven years would pass before an investigator with the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department would determine that an unidentified body found floating in a canal near Modesto on Sept. 11, 1971, was Mary Alice.