Kane Coroner: Hope DNA will identify skull, bones of young woman found in Batavia in 1978

ST. CHARLES TOWNSHIP – Jane Doe’s skull and a few bones were found behind a wall in a house in Batavia on Nov. 12, 1978.

Jane Doe did not have a name, but she was Batavia police report No. 78-5090, a cold case. Then, on April 1, 2022, she got another case number, UP90186, in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs.

“Condition of remains: Currently available for further testing is a single, incomplete cranium with no duplicated elements, right temporal not present and damage to the right zygomatic,” according to her NamUs case information.

“It was just a skull and a few bones behind a wall,” Kane County Coroner Rob Russell said. “There was no indication of any overt cause of death, but someone did not want her to be found. We are kind of working backward on this thing. We have the skull and we are working backward to the body.”

The anthropology department at Northern Illinois University, with assistance from the Illinois Geological Society at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, tested the bones. They determined the skull belonged to a white woman in her mid-20s and that the skull was decades older than 1978, Russell said.

There were no missing person reports, no clues, no indication of who she could have been, Russell said, and the case went cold.

His office became involved after Batavia police did a cold case review and asked for his help in trying to identify Jane Doe, Russell said.

Now, Russell said he hopes the public can help to identify who she was – and possibly solve a cold case much older than the year her skull was found.

Russell is going to use Othram Inc., a private DNA lab, to do the testing to get a DNA profile on Jane Doe.

By using modern DNA technology, which was unavailable in 1978, the hope is to find someone from her family and then to identify who she was, Russell said.

The testing costs $7,500 and Russell is seeking donations through crowdfunding at dnasolves.com. So far, $1,609.84 has been raised.

NamUs began when the National Institute for Justice promoted a system to help identify people who are missing when it started a funding effort in 2003.

The first system launch was for unidentified individuals in 2008 and then for missing persons in 2009.

After several updates, by 2022, the NIJ and FBI Forensic Genetic Genealogy Searching Partnership was established in NamUs, according to its website.

“The technology we use is new and it’s not yet in every agency’s budget and it might be a while before all agencies have funding to use these latest tools,” DNAsolves CEO David Mittelman said in an email. “Crowdfunding and philanthropy work is a bridge to help solve at least some cases and get at least some answers for families in the meantime.”

Mittelman cited a list of solved cases on the website dnasolves.com.

“The process really works,” he said in the email.

Russell is hopeful not only that Jane Doe will be identified but also whoever killed her.

“That’s how they caught the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo,” Russell said of genetic testing through DNA.

DeAngelo was arrested in 2018. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 50 rapes and is serving 11 consecutive life terms at Corcoran State Prison in California, according to news reports.

A former police officer, DeAngelo was identified through genetic genealogy, a new technique that takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind at a crime scene and identifies him or her by tracing a family tree through members who voluntarily submit their DNA to public genealogy databases, according to news reporting at the time.

“I feel this offers people a chance to be part of something meaningful this holiday season,” Russell said in a news release about making donations to fund the testing. “To help identify an individual who may have been thought to be forgotten captures the essence of the holiday season.

“Every individual is precious and deserves to be remembered, regardless of how much time has passed.”

Anyone with information that could help in this investigation is encouraged to call Batavia police at 630-454-2500 and reference case number 78-5090.