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Detectives Still Hope to Identify "Jane Doe"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 7, 2013
CONTACT: Shari Ireton, Director of Communications
425-388-3377, Shari.Ireton@co.snohomish.wa.us
Breaking News Pager: 425-339-5700
Detectives with the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office hold out hope that someone knows something, even just the first name of a young woman murdered more than three decades ago. Believed to be between 15 and 21 years-old, the woman's badly decomposed body was was discovered on August 14, 1977 by blackberry pickers in the south Everett area off 112th St SW and 4th Ave W (Emander Rd). She had been strangled and shot several times in the head. In 1979, David Roth confessed to killing her, but he didn't know her name or where she was from.
Roth picked her up hitchhiking near Silver Lake where he had gone to swim. From there, they went to an area near where her body was later found. Roth said that after drinking some beer, he offered her marijuana, but she declined. He then made sexual advances towards her, but she refused. She expressed she was anxious to go home. He then strangled her and shot her.
Roth was convicted of the crime, served his time and was released in 2005. He has been cooperative with cold case detectives.
In 1992, a plaster cast of Jane Doe’s skull was created for facial reconstruction, in hopes of identifying her. In 2008, cold case detectives James Scharf and David Heitzman along with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office, had Doe’s remains exhumed from her unmarked grave at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Everett in order to get DNA samples extracted from her bones. King County anthropologist Dr. Kathy Taylor examined the bones and determined that Jane Doe was likely much younger then originally thought. She believed Jane Doe to be between 15 to 21 years old at the time of her murder.
A composite of Jane Doe was constructed and a video created in the hopes of identifying her.
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