After 47 years, Jane ‘Seneca’ Doe identified as JoAnn ‘Vicky’ Smith

After more than 47 years, a woman left abandoned in a Seneca field no longer will be known as Jane “Seneca” Doe but by her name: JoAnn “Vicky” Smith.

The Grundy County Coroner’s Office held a news conference Thursday and released the identity of the woman.

Coroner John Callahan said that when he took office in 1998, he felt a need and responsibility to identify her.

“After all, she’s someone’s daughter, someone’s sister,” he said.

Smith was adopted and graduated high school in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area.

Her family will have a celebration of life this weekend in Cincinnati, and plans are to move her grave to South Carolina, where her parents are buried.

Her case had remained cold for more than 40 years. Then, in 2017, Callahan reopened the case with the assistance of Deputy Chief Coroner Brandon Johnson, hoping to use modern-day forensic science to give the victim her identity back.

Johnson combed through old case files, entered the victim into multiple unidentified persons databases, and released several artist-rendered images to the public in the hopes of receiving new information pertaining to the case.

After following every lead and reaching a dead end, on Dec. 18, 2018, the coroner’s office exhumed Doe’s remains to use advancements in DNA.

Forensic odontologist Denise C. Murmann calculated her approximate age using “the molar development method,” concluding her age to be “20.9 plus or minus 5.25 years.” Callahan confirmed Thursday that Smith was 20.

In January 2019, her femur was sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth, Texas, using a grant from the National Missing and Unidentified Person’s System and the Department of Justice.

The lab was able to develop a full female DNA profile.

Johnson said the profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) but the efforts yielded negative results.

Johnson partnered with the DNA Doe Project, an all-volunteer organization that uses genealogical DNA to identify unidentified individuals, in June 2019.

Johnson said distant matches had been found and proved that the case would not be easy due to a difficult family tree.

Johnson previously told The Morris Herald-News that they had found close matches in her family tree from Selma, Alabama, or Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as a first cousin from New York.

On May 14, 2024, adoption records confirmed that Jane “Seneca” Doe was JoAnn “Vicky” Smith. She was 20 years old at the time of her death in 1976.

She was born as baby girl Bynum at Cincinnati General Hospital on Feb. 7, 1956, Johnson said. She later was renamed Diane Carol Bynum and placed for adoption.

She was adopted in October 1956 by George and Lalie Smith and renamed JoAnn Smith, Johnson said.

“Entering a loving family who had numerous adopted children, Vicky was the oldest daughter in the family,” he said.

Smith was attending Southern Ohio College and had been employed at the Marriott chain of hotels in the Cincinnati area as a housekeeper.

Sometime on the evening of June 14, 1976, she left the family residence and was never seen again, Johnson said.

“Unfortunately, that remains a mystery that Vicky’s loving family has spent almost the last five decades missing her and wondering about her whereabouts,” he said.

Smith was discovered Oct. 2, 1976, when Henry Henderson told police that he was “hauling beans to a crib with his granddaughter, Robin Henderson,” in a field west of U.S. Route 6 in Erienna Township in Seneca, about 1.4 miles east of the La Salle County line, when he noticed something lying in a north ditch.

Assuming it was a deer, he stopped his tractor to show his granddaughter. As he neared the ditch, he discovered the body of a young woman. It would take 47 years before officials would learn her identity.

She was found lying with a green plastic bag, taped shut with black electrical tape, and a black, red and white sweater wrapped over her head outside of the bag, according to police reports.

There was a half-bottle of wine and a partial price tag found inside the sweater.

Smith was buried in an unmarked grave at the Braceville – Gardner Cemetery on Thanksgiving Day 1976.

Smith’s mother, Lalie, never gave up hope, Johnson said, and still hoped to be reunited with her daughter until her dying day in 2010.

Smith’s siblings, Phyllis Harris and Ronnie Smith, said the loss of Vicky has been difficult throughout the years, but they always referred to her in the present.

“You always have the idea that it’s a possibility she’s no longer with us, but to get the news – we just refused to accept that,” Ronnie Smith said.

Ronnie Smith said that getting the news about Vicky was “bittersweet.”

“Bitter because of the awful fate Vicky met,” he said, “but sweet because we can [get] closure and bring her home.”

“I can’t imagine anything more devastating than being buried in an unmarked grave,” Ronnie Smith said. “I know it happens, but when it happens to you, it hits a little different.”

He thanked Callahan and Johnson for their unwavering dedication to bringing their beloved sister back to them.

“Now she can be laid to rest with her rightful name,” he said. “JoAnn ‘Vicky’ Smith.”

If you would like to donate to Smith’s journey home, visit gofund.me/7d2c98e9.