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TIGER LADY
Unidentified Deceased Caucasian Female aged 17-19 located on October 26, 1991 in Knowlton Township, Warren Co, NJ
Brown Hair, Brown Eyes
TATTOO of Bengal tiger on rear of left calf
Manner of death is homicide.
Date of Death: Days
Her nickname is Tiger Lady, inspired by her tiger tattoo.
Vital Statistics -
Estimated age: 17 - 19 years old
Approximate Height and Weight: 4'10 - 5'2"; 95 - 110 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Light brown to dirty blonde hair; possibly bleached or dyed. Brown eyes. Both of her ears were pierced; her left ear was pierced four times. The victim had a tattoo of a crouching Bengal tiger on rear of her left calf.
Clothing: No clothing was found with the victim.
Dentals: X-rays and dental charts are available; she had overbite of her upper left rear teeth.
Fingerprints: Not Available
Case History - Her partially decomposed body was discovered in a wooded area in Warren County, Knowlton Township, New Jersey. The body was found near the major interchange of Interstate Route 80, US Route 46 and State Route 94.
NamUs UP #1593
NJ State Police
Doe Network
If you have any information about this case or the identification of this individual, please contact:
The New Jersey State Police at 1-800-709-7090 or e-mail at
missingp@gw.njsp.org
Warren County Prosecutor's Office - 908-475-6275
Tattoo and Sketch Only Clues to an Identity - By IVER PETERSON, Published: April 19, 1993
She gazes out of the picture, her eyes a little bored, maybe a little hostile, waiting.
She seems to be real, and yet is not. The face of the woman on homicide police bulletins being posted in truck stops and highway police barracks across the country is in fact a computer's best guess about the appearance of a young woman who was murdered, and her body dumped in a truck parking area off Interstate 80 here, 18 months ago.
When she was found by hunters, her face had so badly deteriorated that no reliable picture of her face could be drawn. The police know her today only by the striking animal tattoo on her left calf: Tiger Lady.
Hers is the first picture created for New Jersey detectives by the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department's Computer Assisted Recovery Enhancement System, a program that begins by scanning a victim's skull and then reconstructs the muscle and flesh of a human face. Corridor for Killers
The need to resort to the expensive process points up what is emerging as a particularly grim and troubling problem for state law-enforcement agencies across the country, the use of major highways as a dumping ground for murder victims. It is a criminal practice that greatly increases the difficulty of identifying anonymous victims and so of taking the first big step toward identifying the killer.
"We're getting so much more dumping on the interstates because the interstates system is a continuous, highly anonymous corridor that gives a killer a convenient avenue to get a body out of the area where he killed it," said Lieut. Robert Scott, supervisor of the Major Crimes Unit for the New Jersey State Police, in explaining why the big roads have become today's equivalent of the back alley of a half-century ago.
"A killer can drive for four or five hours and go through several states, and because of the lack of communication between state police agencies, if a New Jersey person is murdered and dumped in a pull-off in Pennsylvania, it could be days before we realize that that's our body they've got there," he said. "By then the killer could be anywhere in the country."
Witnesses are also quickly scattered on the interstates, Lieutenant Scott added, and besides, he asked, who pays attention to other people on an interstate?
"It's not like you're on your own street or even in your own town," he said. "When people get on an interstate, they just want to get to where they're going, and nobody gives a damn about what's going on around them."
Tiger Lady is the third body to be found along Interstate 80 in the last six years, according to state police and county prosecutors. The bodies of at least five women, presumed to have been prostitutes, have been left along the New Jersey Turnpike in recent years, Lieutenant Scott said. Last summer, the dismembered body of a Massachusetts businessman, Thomas Mulcahy, was dumped along the Garden State Parkway after he was murdered in New York City. Tattoo Leads Nowhere
The police say that when a body like Tiger Lady's is found, it is either identified fairly quickly, principally by matching it with a missing-persons report, or else the victim remains unknown to the police for years as is the case with "Baby Hope," a girl whose body was found in 1991 in a picnic cooler along the Henry Hudson Parkway in northern Manhattan.
At first, investigators for the Warren County prosecutor, John J. O'Reilly, assumed that Tiger Lady, who is about 20 years old, would be quickly identified because of the distinctive, seven-inch long tattoo that would be in plain view if she wore a skirt or shorts.
But detectives went through 400 missing-persons' reports to no avail. A police composite sketch was drawn up, based on the remains of the woman's face, but it too produced no leads.
Finally, in early March, Mr. O'Reilly turned to the Toronto Police, who using the woman's known weight, about 100 pounds, the tint of her skin and hair, drew a new skin over the skull, with its high cheekbones, strong jaw and narrow-set eyes. The results were strikingly different from the police artist's sketch. New Poster and Number
The state police made a second version of the Toronto picture, showing the woman with longer, darker hair, with eyes looking ahead and with thinner lips, because lips, along with eye color, are the most uncertain elements in reconstructing a face from a skull, said the Toronto Police Constable, David Sills, who created the original. Mr. Sills said experience with the computer-generated photographs has shown them to be 80 percent accurate.
The final cost of the Canadian police service is not yet known, Mr. O'Reilly said. "It's expensive, but worth it," he said.
Two weeks ago, a new poster with a special toll-free number, (800) 822-LADY, was released, and about 25 calls a day come in. The pictures are being shown on a cable program that is played at truck stops, along with the description of a tractor-trailer truck, with a white cab and a green-and-white trailer that was spotted near the place where the body was later found.
Meanwhile, Tiger Lady gazes impatiently from behind her computer-drawn eyes. Detective August Wistner of the state police was asked if the new picture made Tiger Lady more real to him, and the wish to find her real name more urgent. But Detective Wistner made it clear that the tangible evidence of Tiger Lady's murdered body was a stronger incentive to him than anything a computer can draw.
"She's been a real person to us since the minute she was found," he said. "So we'd really like to find out who she is."
Photos: Two computer-generated images of a woman whose body was found 18 months ago in a parking area off Interstate 80 in Warrington, N.J. (New Jersey State Police); A tattoo on the woman's left calf has given her the name by which the police know her: Tiger Lady.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/19/nyregion/tattoo-and-sketch-only-clues-to-an-identity.html
