Identified! VA - Mclean, BlkFem 15-20, UP6470, wooded area behind apart complex, clothes, jewelry, Sep'01 - Patricia Agnes "Choubi" Gildawie

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dnasolves.com

After 22 years, Fairfax County Jane Doe ('01) is Identified

Fairfax County PD Teams with Othram to Identify a Homicide Victim Found in 2001
dnasolves.com dnasolves.com
''Detectives learned Gildawie was born in France in February 1958 and came to the United States when she was eight months old. In the early 1970s, Gildawie moved to the City of Fairfax. Prior to her disappearance at age 17, Gildawie was dating an older man. He worked at an upholstery store, near the intersection of Church Street and Lawyers Road in Vienna. She was known to drive a white Cadillac Eldorado with red interior. Gildawie was last seen on February 8, 1975. Detectives are continuing to investigate the homicide with the new information provided by the family.''

''Anyone with information about this case is asked to submit tips through Fairfax County Crime Solvers. Tips can be submitted anonymously through Crime Solvers by phone – 1-866-411-TIPS 866-411-8477). Othram would like to thank the DNASolves community and everyone that helped fund the costs of performing the advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy research that led to a break in the case.''
 
It's too bad her older boyfriend wasn't looked into more at the time. Her mother and sister didn't know his name according to one article, but they did know where he worked and what kind of car he drove. An article I read said her mother and sister didn't find police at the time helpful. The police should have gotten the guy's name and at least looked into him back then. But it sounds like another case where they just assumed she did not want contact with her family. So many years have gone by now. The guy maybe dead. If not, they may eventually find him. He sounds suspicious. Her sister said in one article that the last time she saw Choubi, she had bruises, although the sister did not know what from.
 
I am so grateful this young woman has been identified and was so by the proper technology available. So many have searched for her name for years. I've been involved in this work long enough to see DNA change the scope of who the person could be - wrong race, wrong gender - in one case I recall both. Estimates of age, ht, wt (sometimes just based on clothing recovered), dental info provided by family, estimated PMI, and even eye color for goodness sake, etc ruling out possible matches which are then not considered and should have been. No one knows how many of these types of cases exist, but I promise you, it's more than you think. This is another one of those cases, which hopefully encourages and motivates everyone in the missing and unidentified community to step out of the boundaries of the box created inaccurately (albeit with best intent) and when available use the most concrete, expert knowledge there is - DNA technology.
 
othram said:
Case is solved: After 22 years, Fairfax County Jane Doe ('01) is Identified


Couple surprising things here:

  1. The murder victim is not African American. She is white and originally from France.
  2. She was found in 2001 but as many noted, the clothing and personal items indicated that she might have been from an earlier decade. In fact, this woman went missing in 1975.


Totally crowdfunded by people like you and we are so grateful (as is her family). If you want to see other cases that need funding, check this out:


Pending Cases
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@othram I can't sing your praises enough. Many many thanks. Your entire team is truly amazing.
 
They thought the remains were found less than a year after death. The condition of the clothing is remarkable after 26 years in the elements. I wonder if she was initially buried in a crawl space or basement, then relocated years later to the location where found, maybe due to the killer relocating or something...
 
pass-thru said:
They thought the remains were found less than a year after death. The condition of the clothing is remarkable after 26 years in the elements. I wonder if she was initially buried in a crawl space or basement, then relocated years later to the location where found, maybe due to the killer relocating or something...
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I wonder about her being kept in a freezer.
 
wtop.com

‘Oh my God, they found her’: Fairfax Co. police ID remains found 20 years ago as teen who disappeared in ’75 - WTOP News

Fairfax County Police identified remains, found decades ago, as those of a teenager from Tysons, Virginia, who went missing in the ’70s. The question remains: Who killed her?
wtop.com wtop.com

Free spirit​

Duperly, who’s 18 months older than her younger sister, was recently married and starting a life of her own when “Choubi” went missing in February 1975.

The family nickname means “little cabbage.”

“My mother used to call her ‘my little cabbage’ when she was just a baby because her head was so round,” Duperly said.

Born in France in 1958, Gildawie had moved with her family to Fairfax City when she was 8 months old and grew up in Northern Virginia.

“She was a free spirit,” her sister recalled. “She didn’t want to live under anybody’s rules. She was a sweet girl. She never hurt anybody, as far as I know. But she just got involved with the wrong type of people.”

​

An older man​


At the time she went missing, Gildawie was dating an older man — he was in his 30s, Duperly recalled — who worked in an upholstery store.


Choubi had a habit of coming home to her mother’s house at least once every few weeks. “Get some food, have a place to lay her head,” Duperly said. And then, suddenly, she stopped coming home.


“I’m quite certain in my heart — now, no evidence — that he probably had something to do with her disappearance,” Duperly said of the man her sister was dating.


O’Carroll, with Fairfax County police, said detectives are interested in speaking with the man. The upholstery store was located near the intersection of Church Street and Lawyers Road in Vienna, but is no longer there.


“We’ve been working hard on tracking him down,” O’Carroll said. “We know where he used to work — that business is no longer in operation. So we have a lot of work do to find out where he is and what he knows.”
 
Police said potential leads about the female victim’s identity fell through for decades until they teamed up with forensic laboratory Othram — a company which they have used in the past. Othram scientists created a DNA profile for the victim that matched Duperly’s family tree. Investigators were then able to confirm the remains belonged to Gildawie in August through additional DNA testing, Fairfax County police said.

Duperly said she had peace knowing her sister’s body can reclaim her name. But, she said, the discovery also left her with more questions in the weeks since Fairfax County police called her family: Who gunned down her sister? How long was she in those woods?
Fairfax County officials said detectives have those same questions. Now that police know whose body was at Lincoln Circle, they are investigating whether the person who killed Gildawie is still alive and trying to get away with the crime.

“Whether she ran into things, or somebody was beating on her, I don't know for sure,” Duperly said.

Gildawie was a free spirit who did not like adults telling her what to do, Duperly said. In the months leading up to her disappearance, she said, Gildawie had rarely come home at all, stopping by for a couple of hours once every week or two.
Duperly said she worried.

She knew her sister was dating an older man in his 30s, though she did not know his name. He worked at an upholstery store near Church Street and Lawyers Road in Vienna, she said. Duperly remembered that Gildawie would sometimes drive up to Duperly’s place in the man’s white Cadillac Eldorado with a red interior.

"Detectives learned Gildawie was born in France in February 1958 and came to the United States when she was eight months old," the release said. "In the early 1970s, Gildawie moved to the City of Fairfax. Prior to her disappearance at age 17, Gildawie was dating an older man. He worked at an upholstery store, near the intersection of Church Street and Lawyers Road in Vienna."
www.kmbc.com

Police use DNA testing to identify body of teen who went missing in 1975

Patricia Agnes Gildawie was last seen on Feb. 8, 1975, when she was 17 years old.
www.kmbc.com www.kmbc.com
 
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breachtones said:
forensics rreeeaally dropped the ball on this one..
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IMHO they should go back and just take a 2nd look at any other unsolved cases that were done by the same person.

I don't know if Ms. Gildawie was listed in missing person's databases in 2001-if not, that should be looked into also- but based on the "teenage" age range and going missing from the same state where she was found, it's a pity her identity wasn't considered for this Doe back in 2001.
 
I do think her remains may have been somewhere else for years. The sweater was in very good condition. It's probably understandable a mistake was made about how long she had been there. That's a mistake that does occur in cold cases. But not getting her race right is less explainable. I guess a brand name wasn't detectable on the sweater which would probably have been useful to pinpoint how old it was. Bright colors like that while popular in the 70s, were also popular in the late '90s and early 2000s, so when I looked (albeit somewhat in passing when I was reading about another case) at photos of the sweater before she was identified and thought back to clothing colors popular for young women in the very late 1990s and early 2000s when I was 12- in my early teens, the clothing colors made sense to me as her being a Jane Doe from that timeframe, actually. They didn't seem off or terribly far off to me. Of course, someone who remembers 1970s clothing might have had a different perspective. So the jewelry and sweater didn't really look off to me when given the estimated time frame. Just adding my perspective as to why a mistake was made about about her sweater and jewelry, etc. If some of the 1970s type jewelry even and definitely colors hadn't been popular again in that time frame, then an estimate of how long she had been there may have been more accurate.
 
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There have been a lot of Does identified within the last few years whose stats were COMPLETELY wrong, whether it be race/ethnicity, date of death, height/weight, etc., but Choubi's has to be the most wrong I can recall!

We are seeing a lot of identified Does being of different races than suspected, so I think it's important to not take it as 100% for skeletal remains in particular. (Ex: Choubi, Janet Lee Lucas, Julie Davis, Randi Boothe-Wilson, and more I can't recall now).
 
Springrain said:
There have been a lot of Does identified within the last few years whose stats were COMPLETELY wrong, whether it be race/ethnicity, date of death, height/weight, etc., but Choubi's has to be the most wrong I can recall!

We are seeing a lot of identified Does being of different races than suspected, so I think it's important to not take it as 100% for skeletal remains in particular. (Ex: Choubi, Janet Lee Lucas, Julie Davis, Randi Boothe-Wilson, and more I can't recall now).
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There is a lot of uncertainty in anthropological analysis of ancestry. We don't use it at all. We will get the facts from DNA testing anyways.
 
Great job again @othram! RIP Gildawie and condolences to her family

Hoping that the clothing and jewelry she was found with is still in evidence and perhaps can be retested to see if it has any DNA that points to the person(s) responsible for her murder.
 
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