Unidentified 1977 murder victim's body exhumed
Published: April 25, 2008
By: Jim Haley
Herald Writern
Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives have exhumed the body of a woman who was murdered in 1977 but has never been identified.
The remains of the “Jane Doe” murder victim, who was buried in Everett, were dug up April 1 in hopes of using modern technology to identify her, according to court documents filed Thursday in Snohomish County Superior Court.
Detectives obtained a court order authorizing exhumation on March 30, documents say.
David M. Roth was convicted in the woman's murder and has served his sentence. Detectives recently contacted Roth to verify that he has no idea of her identity.
David Roth is the brother of Randy Roth, who was convicted in the early 1990s of drowning his wife -- a case that attracted international attention.
Officers in 1992 tried to reconstruct the face of David Roth's victim using sculpting techniques and clay. Photos of the sculpture were widely distributed, but nobody came forward to identify her.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said the 1992 sculpture may make the woman look much older than she really was, and a sheriff’s artist will put together a new version of her likeness.
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New bid to find identity of Snohomish County murder victim
Published: April 28, 2008
By: The Seattle Times
Officials in Snohomish County have exhumed the remains of a woman who was murdered nearly 31 years ago in hopes that new technology will help identify her.
The woman's body, strangled and shot in the head, was found in August 1977 by blackberry pickers in south Everett.
David Marvin Roth was convicted of first-degree murder. Investigators said he picked up a hitchhiker near Silver Lake and drove her to an area in south Everett, where they drank some beer.
Court records say that when she refused him sex, he strangled and shot her.
Roth was linked to the killing in 1979 after his rifle was seized in a traffic stop. It was matched to bullets found in the murder victim.
Sheriff's officials say Roth maintains he doesn't even know the victim's first name.
Investigators obtained a court order to exhume her remains, saying DNA and other new technology may make it possible to identify her.
The remains of the victim, believed to have been 15 to 21 years old, were exhumed from her unmarked grave on April 1 at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Everett.
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Killer Of 30-Year-Old Homicide Known,
Victim’s Identity A Mystery
Published: May 1, 2008
Kirotv.com
EVERETT, Wash. -- A homicide case more than 30 years old has been solved and the convicted murderer has served his prison sentence, but the victim of the homicide has yet to be identified.
The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office has released a sketch of Jane Doe in hopes of trying to solve a 30-year-old case.
In August 1977, the female’s decomposed body was discovered by blackberry pickers in the south Everett area off 112th Street Southwest and Fourth Avenue West, which was called Emander Road at that time.
According to police, Jane Doe was hitchhiking near Silver Lake, when David Roth, 20 years old at the time, picked her up on his way back from swimming. Police said they went to an area near where her body was later found and drank some beer. When she refused his sexual advances, he strangled her and then shot her.
Roth was convicted of the murder in 1979 and has since served his prison sentence and been released. Police said Roth was of little help since he did not know the victim or even her first name when he committed the murder.
Officials were not able to identify her and said she could be anywhere from 17 to 37 years old, since so little was known at the time of the crime.
In 1992, a facial reconstruction was created in hopes of identifying her, but she still remains a mystery. Police believe she may be from out of state since no one has come forward to identify her.
Police describe Jane Doe as a white female, most likely between the ages of 15 and 21. She was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 155 pounds. She had short, light brown to brown hair, which did not have any hair color or treatment on it. She appeared to have a suntan and was wearing a tanktop with pastel stripes, cut-off jeans, and blue and white tennis shoes. She also had a Timex watch with a brown leather band on her left wrist. Her two upper front teeth had dental restorations.
Although the case of who killed her has been solved for nearly 30 years, detectives want to identify the young woman so they can return her remains to her family. Detectives ask if anyone reported a girl missing in the late 1970s who fits the description of this Jane Doe or is somewhat close to it, call the tip line at 425-388-3845. Police say you should provide the missing girl’s first name, middle initial, last name and date of birth.
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Snohomish sheriff's office releases new sketch
of unidentified 1977 murder victim
Published: May 1, 2008
By: Seattle Times Staff
Snohomish County sheriff's deputies today released a new sketch of a 1977 murder victim whose remains haven't been identified.
Last month, deputies exhumed the woman's remains with the hope that new forensic technology will finally help identify her.
Cold-case detectives, a forensic anthropologist and the now-retired detective who was once assigned to the case composed the new sketch of the victim. The sketch reflects what the woman looked like before she was found near Paine Field in summer 1977, said sheriff's spokeswoman Rebecca Hover.
The anthropologist who has examined the bones has determined that the victim was likely 15 to 21 years old — much younger than case detectives initially believed, Hover said.
Until now, investigators have known only that the woman was tall, had a tan and had healthy teeth. She weighed about 155 pounds, had short, light-brown hair and was dressed in cutoff jeans, a striped tank top and blue-and-white tennis shoes, Hover said.
Blackberry pickers found the woman's remains about five days after David Roth strangled her with an elastic cord and shot her with a .22-caliber rifle. Roth had picked up the woman when she was hitchhiking and killed her when she refused to have sex with him, according to court files.
Roth was convicted of first-degree murder in 1979 and has since been released. He didn't know her name, Hover said.
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Detectives hope to ID homicide victim after decades
Published: May 2, 2008
By Jim Haley
Herald Writer
EVERETT -- Snohomish County sheriff's cold case detectives know who killed the young woman more than 30 years ago.
They recently produced a sketch of what she might have looked like in 1977.
Now, they want to know her name.
Detectives on Thursday released a new sketch of the unidentified victim, and aim to distribute it as widely as possible so somebody might recognize her.
The sketch, done by a retired sheriff's detective, was drawn after her remains were exhumed April 1, and a King County anthropologist determined the victim, between 15 and 21 years old, was younger than officials thought years ago.
The deputies also had her DNA sent to the FBI for comparison and to be included in a national database.
"We want to give some answers to her family," detective Jim Scharf said Thursday. "We want to return her identity to her. She's been Jane Doe to us for longer than she was alive."
The victim was described as white and was tall, standing about 5 feet 10 inches. She weighed around 155 pounds, had short brown or light brown hair. Her hair showed no sign of color treatments. The victim appeared to have a suntan at the time of her death.
She was wearing a tank top with pastel stripes, cutoff jeans and blue and white tennis shoes. She also had a Timex watch with a brown leather band on her left wrist. Her upper two front teeth had extensive dental work.
Although nobody knew who she was, David Marvin Roth was held responsible for her August 1977 strangling and shooting. He dumped her body in some bushes in south Everett near 112th Street SW and Fourth Avenue W. Blackberry pickers later found her partially decomposed remains.
Roth was charged in January 1978 after bullets from his .22-caliber rifle matched those found in the victim. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 1979 and stayed in prison until May 2005.
After his release, Roth cooperated with deputies, detective Dave Heitzman said.
This is the second time detectives have gone public with information about the victim in an attempt to identify her.
In 1992, now retired detective John Hinds used a plaster cast of the victim's skull to create a facial reconstruction. At the time, her age was pegged at between 17 and 35. Photos of the reconstruction were distributed widely without success.
Hinds, who now lives in Thurston County, spent several years after retirement on the East Coast doing forensic artist work in Maine and New Hampshire.
Information he had retained from her skull, plus new information from the Snohomish County medical examiner, enabled him to revise her likeness.
Although Roth doesn't know the victim's name, he told detectives what her hair style was like at the time of her death.
Roth also told detectives that he picked her up hitchhiking on the Bothell-Everett Highway on the east side of Silver Lake. According to court papers, he took her to an isolated spot, drank some beer and killed her when she refused him sex.
Detectives also released sketches of some of the victim's clothing and the watch on Thursday.
The case was reopened after a call from the Doe Network, a North American organization that keeps track of missing and unidentified people. T
The Doe Network wanted to know if someone missing from Eastern Washington could be the 1977 murder victim.
That person had already been ruled out years ago, but detectives learned that now-retired sheriff's detective Joe Ward already had started to reopen the case. Scharf and Heitzman continued the work Ward started and in March secured a court order to exhume the body.
"With a person of that age range, somebody is going to miss her," Heitzman said.
A lot of the missing person databases from that era are incomplete, Scharf said. Different jurisdictions handle things in different ways, and some police agencies used to eliminate people from reported runaway lists when they turned 18.
Heitzman and Scharf hope the new sketch and information will lead to a solid tip on the victim's identity.
If not, it may be the last chance to learn her name.
"This is the best we're going to get," Hinds said.
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Mystery Left Unsolved: Murderer Caught But Victim Never Identified
NEW Sketch Included: Deputies want your help
to identify teen killed in 1977
Published: May 2, 2008
Snohomish County, WA
Sheriff deputies have mystery on their hands. The murderer was caught but the victim he shot was never identified.
It's been thirty years since Jane Doe's badly decomposed body was discovered. In the summer of 1977, blackberry pickers found a young woman shot in the head near Everett.
She had been strangled and shot multiple times. At that time, deputies weren't able to identify her.
Two years after the gruesome discovery, Jane Doe's killer was convicted of her murder and sentenced to prison. David Roth was only 20 year old at the time. Roth has since served his time and been released. He is now helping detectives solve the mystery of her identity.
Roth picked up Jane Doe as she was hitchhiking near Silver Lake in Snohomish County. Roth says then went to the lake to swim. They also drank beer but when she refused to have sex with him, he strangled her and then shot her.
In April of this year, cold case detectives exhumed the body of Jane Doe from her unmarked grave. They took DNA samples from her bones. New information about her identity was released Thursday.
They now believe Jane Doe is a white female, probably between the ages of 15 and 21.
The autopsy report estimates she was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 155 pounds.
She had short, light brown to brown hair, which did not have any hair color or treatment on it. She appeared to have a suntan and was wearing the following: a tank top with pastel stripes, cut off jeans, and blue and white tennis shoes. She also had a Timex watch with a brown leather band on her left wrist. Her upper two front teeth had dental restorations.
Although the case has been solved for nearly 30 years, detectives want to identify the young woman so they can return her remains to her family. Deputies believe Jane Doe may be from another state since no one has come forward about her disappearance.
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Do you know this woman's name?
Police trying to ID '77 murder victim
Published: May 2, 2008
By: Scott Gutierrez
P-I Reporter
Unlike most cold cases involving unidentified victims, Snohomish County sheriff's detectives actually know who killed the young woman whose remains were found about 30 years ago in blackberry brush south of Everett.
The evidence pointed to David M. Roth, then 20, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1979 and sentenced to prison. Despite Roth's confession to a detective, he swore he never knew the name of the hitchhiker he picked up, then strangled and shot several times after she refused to have sex with him one day in August 1977.
The girl's identity still eludes sheriff's investigators, who Thursday released a new composite sketch of "Jane Doe." They hope someone will recognize their murder victim -- maybe a family member who reported her missing. And they hope to bring both cases some closure.
"In essence, he took her life and he took her identity away from her because she's been a 'Jane Doe' now for 30 years -- that's probably twice as long as she was known by her real name," said Detective Jim Scharf, who, along with his partner, has 62 unsolved homicides and missing-person cases. Some date back to the 1960s.
Investigators think they might have a better estimate now of the girl's age and have more accurately depicted how she might have looked as she was thumbing for cars along the Bothell-Everett Highway on the day she was killed.
In 1992, Detective John Hinds produced a plaster reconstruction of the face of the victim, then thought to be in her 20s or 30s. It was shown to the media but never produced solid leads.
"We had someone in Canada wondering if it was someone who was 50 years old. That's why we wanted to get the forensic artist to do a new likeness of her," Scharf said.
Last month, in hopes of reviving the investigation, cold-case detectives working with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office exhumed the woman's remains from an unmarked grave at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Everett to extract DNA samples to enter into a nationwide database.
The remains were examined by King County forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor, who concluded the victim was probably between 15 and 21, and likely 16 to 19. That is younger than the initial estimate of 17 to 37.
Hinds, an FBI-trained forensic artist who has since retired, created a new forensic sketch of the girl's face, based on photographs of the plaster reconstruction and new estimates of her age.
Roth was paroled in May 2005 after serving 25 years in prison under the state's former sentencing laws. He now lives in Everett and has cooperated with detectives, even pointing out that they initially had picked the wrong hairstyle for the composite sketch, Scharf said.
But he never knew her name and only recalled her talking about living with a couple of guys and that she had hitchhiked in the Midwest, Scharf said.
Roth had picked up the girl near Silver Lake, where he had been swimming. They got some beer and drove to the woods south of Everett, near Mariner High School.
Blackberry pickers found her body Aug. 14, 1977. Two beer cans were found nearby.
Within days, Roth's friend reported to police that Roth had talked about the murder and wanted help moving the body. Police later matched the fatal bullets to a rifle and ammunition in Roth's vehicle.
Roth, who was living in Lynnwood, temporarily fled the state. He was arrested in January 1979 after police found him in Port Orchard, Scharf said.
The girl was white, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 155 pounds. She had short, light brown or brown hair, which was her natural color. She appeared to have a suntan and was wearing a tank top with pastel stripes, cut-off jeans and blue and white tennis shoes. She may have been from out of state.
She wore a Timex watch with a brown leather band on her left wrist and had dental restorations on her two front teeth, according to Sheriff's Office reports.
Anyone who might recognize the sketch or who reported missing girls in the late 1970s is asked to call the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office tip line at 425-388-3845.
Sheriff's investigators ask that anyone who reported a missing girl provide the girl's first name, middle initial, last name and birth date, so that authorities can ensure that the information is present in state and national databases, Snohomish County sheriff's spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said.
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Lacey man helps in old murder case
Published: May 30, 2008
The Olympian
A Lacey man is trying to help Snohomish County find the identity of the victim in a 31-year-old murder case.
Detective John Hinds, an FBI-trained forensic artist, has made a new drawing of the unidentified woman.
Hinds, 58, moved to Lacey last year. He also did the initial clay reconstruction from the decomposed skull of the murder victim.
As a forensic artist he sketches suspects and sculpts clay reconstructions of a homicide victim’s facial features based on casts of the skull.
Hinds latest drawing of the 1977 Jane Doe is based on his original clay reconstruction of her head and on a physical description by her convicted killer, David Roth, who has served a 26-year-prison sentence and lives in the Everett area, Snohomish County Detective Jim Sharf said.
Sharf and another Snohomish County detective who lead the sheriff’s cold case unit are renewing efforts to identify the victim. They have exhumed her unmarked grave at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Everett to try to find DNA that can be placed in a nationwide database of missing persons.
“The important thing is to get her identified so we can return her remains to her family for proper burial,” Sharf said.
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Want to bring a cold case back to life?
Call this guy
Published: May 31, 2008
By: Jeremy Pawloski
The Olympian
Retired Snohomish County detective John Hinds, who moved to Lacey last year with his wife, Merry Beth, is an FBI-trained forensic artist who has sketched suspects and sculpted the faces of unidentified homicide victims for law enforcement agencies from Washington to Maine.
Hinds, 58, estimates that he has done hundreds of drawings and three-dimensional sculptures over the years.
In 1993, one of Hinds' sketches helped catch Paul Kenneth Keller of Everett, who set 76 fires that caused more than $22 million in property damage, one of the biggest arson sprees in U.S. history.
Since retiring in the mid-1990s, Hinds has stayed busy helping law enforcement agencies in New Hampshire and Maine. Now that he is in South Sound, he hopes to develop relationships with law enforcement here.
"It just gives me a good feeling to know that I'm doing some good in this world and that my drawings have helped catch suspects that raped, robbed or murdered someone," he said.
Earlier this year, when the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office cold-case unit needed help updating a composite of a woman murdered in 1977, they turned to Hinds. Hinds, who did the initial clay reconstruction from the decomposed skull of the victim, came up with a new drawing in April.
Hinds based the sketch on his reconstruction and on a physical description provided by her convicted killer, David Roth, who served a 26-year prison sentence and now lives in the Everett area, Snohomish County detective Jim Sharf said. The sheriff's office hopes to identify her.
Learning the basics
Hinds claims he did not have any artistic talent before he started taking drawing classes while he was a detective in the late 1980s. That might be difficult for observers to believe, based on the detailed work that adorns his sketchbook. It includes murder victims, murder suspects and celebrities such as martial arts legend Bruce Lee and actress Angelina Jolie.
Hinds' sketches have been included in the book "Secrets to Realistic Drawing," published by the couple who taught him to draw.
Hinds said he realized his interest in drawing could be useful in solving crimes in the late '80s, as he grew frustrated with a boilerplate kit used by law enforcement for constructing suspect descriptions into drawings. Identi-Kit — a tool now seldom used in law enforcement — uses foil overlays of different facial features, such as eyes, ears, noses and mouths, to create a rendering of a suspect's face. After Hinds cleared several robbery cases in the late '80s, he noticed that the suspects looked nothing like their Identi-Kit renderings.
As a major-crimes detective in Snohomish County, Hinds realized composite sketches would be a better tool. But first, he had to take drawing classes and become certified as a composite artist to meet eligibility requirements for the FBI Academy's forensic-artist classes.
During the 80-hour, two-week FBI course, Hinds learned skills such as how to draw age progressions of missing people, how to define the shape of someone's face and basic bone structure from a cast of a skull. He also learned how to do three-dimensional facial reconstructions and how to include potential disguises that suspects might use.
A career in forensics
Hinds said that after he finished the FBI class, he pulled out all of his unsolved cases and drew pictures of the suspects. He estimated that he solved half of them based on the drawings. He said he also worked for a number of outside area law enforcement agencies when they needed the help of a forensic artist.
Hinds estimated that he took hundreds of hours of classes in forensic art.
Some of the tricks of the trade in making composites from skull casts include looking at a victim's waist or belt size to determine his or her body build. However, Hinds said, "facial reconstruction is basically only 50 percent accurate." No matter how good an artist is, from a skull alone, it's impossible to tell what someone's hairstyle or nose length is, he said.
Hinds said that when he is developing a composite of a homicide victim from a skull, he works closely with a medical examiner or coroner's office. They can have helpful details, such as a victim's hair or eye color or other factors, he said.
In early 1993, when Hinds was working on an FBI task force charged with solving a rash of arsons in Snohomish and King counties, several of his sketches based on eyewitness descriptions of a suspect were published in local newspapers. One of Hinds' sketches helped persuade the father of Paul Keller to go to police with his suspicion that his son could be the arsonist.
Keller, whose likeness in one of Hinds' sketches is very similar to how he appeared at that time, is serving a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life after he pleaded guilty to more than 70 arsons.
On Friday, Scharf said he hopes Hinds' composite of the woman killed in 1977 leads to her identification. What makes her case unique is that the convicted killer, Roth, has served his sentence and is a free man. Roth provided details for the composite about the hairstyle of the woman, whom he had picked up hitchhiking, Scharf said.
Snohomish County's cold-case unit is renewing efforts to identify the woman and have exhumed her unmarked grave at Cypress Lawn Memorial
Park in Everett to try to find DNA that can be placed in a nationwide database of missing people.
"The important thing is to get her identified so we can return her remains to her family for proper burial," Sharf said.
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UNT uses DNA lab to help families find closure
Published: July 11, 2008
By: Byron Harris
WFAA-TV
The letters DNA conjure up primetime crime shows where lab tests solve complicated crimes.
But for thousands of families testing DNA means something else - peace of mind.
The University of North Texas is using its DNA lab to help some families find closure.
A mother's love for Billy Smolinski is woven into a quilt.
He disappeared nearly four years ago.
And just as the parents of Roxanne Paultoff, and Cynthia Day, and Brian Shaffer, his mom seeks an end to the torment of not knowing where her son is or how he died.
"We have some evidence that Billy has been buried. It's just trying to find out where," she said.
The UNT Center for Human Identification is trying to help. It's brought scores of law enforcement officials to a conference to show them how to tap the expanding science of DNA testing.
UNT has one of the four most advanced DNA labs in the country.
The same level of science that exonerated the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey earlier this week is being used in the lab.
What they do here is analyze human samples for DNA content. Then they compare that information with a database of known DNA samples to see who it belongs to.
A robot speeds up processing and reduces the possibility of error.
The number of missing people and unknown victims nationwide means that the job of forensic DNA testing is just beginning.
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Long after body was found, detectives search for 'Jane Doe'
Published: March 29, 2009
By: Diana Hefley
HeraldNet
He calls her the victim. The female. The person he killed.
David Roth spent more than half his life locked in a concrete cell for the murder of a woman he left without a name.
She was a hitchhiker he picked up on a hot August day in 1977 near Silver Lake in Everett. She refused to have sex with him. He wrapped a cord around her neck, strangled her, emptied a rifle into her head, took her life.
He erased her.
Homicide detectives long ago found her body, yet still search for the young woman they call their "precious Jane Doe."
Her identity apparently doesn't exist in the world of police databases and computer files. Jane Doe is among thousands of the nation's unnamed dead.
The search has stretched across four decades, bumping up against a wall of seeming impossibility. Detectives tried to capture her resemblance in pencil sketches. They sent her hands to forensic experts to collect her fingerprints. They've scoured lists of missing women. They dug up her remains to extract a genetic sample.
"This girl has been a Jane Doe longer than who she was," Snohomish County sheriff's detective Jim Scharf said.
In the hour she spent with Roth, he stole her life, her identity and so far, the chance to be claimed. He took her story.
"She needs to have her name back again," Scharf said, "and the family will have some answers."
Scharf and sheriff's detective David Heitzman last year intensified the search for Jane Doe's identity. The hunt has spanned the country and into Canada. The trail also brought them back to Roth.
Today he is a free man, released from prison in 2005. He is cobbling together a life outside prison walls, in a world that doesn't much resemble the one that left him behind.
Roth, 51, agreed to help the detectives with their search. He allowed them to dig around in memories he'd rather forget.
For the detectives, it's the first time a convicted killer has helped them without anything to gain for his cooperation. Roth, who spent nearly three decades following orders from uniformed men with guns, says he is trying to do the right thing.
"I'm here to help the detectives solve a mystery," he said.
It was the summer of 1977, a few days before Elvis Presley was found dead in his Graceland mansion. The 1950s science fiction classics "War of the Worlds" and "When Worlds Collide" were billed as a double feature at the Puget Park Drive-In Theater. Kids flocked to Silver Lake to soak up the last warm days of summer vacation.
She was walking south along the Bothell-Everett Highway on the east side of the lake. The beach was a good place to find someone willing to share a joint or a few beers.
Roth, then 20, drove by in his 1963 Chevy Nova. He noticed the tall girl with brown hair and a summer tan. She was wearing short, cutoff blue jeans and a striped tank top. She got into his car and Roth headed toward the Midland Grocery on Fourth Avenue. He picked up a six-pack of beer and drove to a secluded area near Mariner High School.
She smoked a cigarette, drank some beer. Roth wanted to have sex with her. She turned him down. Roth handed her a gift: a long, brilliant peacock feather.
She still wanted to go home.
Rage took over. Roth stretched a bungee cord around her neck, dragged her into the woods and fired his .22-caliber rifle into her head until the clip was empty, then picked up the casings.
Still raging, Roth later shot up his Nova after driving away from what he'd done.
More than 30 years later, sitting in a conference room in the sheriff's office, flanked by detectives, Roth doesn't want to talk about the killing. His deep voice is thick with irritation as he makes clear he's not interested in recounting the details. How he killed the victim, the female, the person, he says, doesn't have anything to do with finding her name.
What he did is there in court papers, old newspaper clippings and a thick, glossy green police file labeled Doe, J. 1977.
Berry pickers found her on Aug. 14, 1977. A few days exposed to the hot August sun and the destruction of her face made it nearly impossible to tell what she looked like before taking a ride with Roth.
Hints about her life are in the autopsy report. In the pockets of her shorts were 17 cents, a partial pack of Marlboros and an empty plastic bag. She wore blue-and-white size 7 boys tennis shoes, Mr. Sneekers brand. Her Timex watch was on her left wrist, the leather band fastened at the second-to-last notch.
The seven lead slugs dug out of her head belonged to someone else.
Sheriff's detectives caught some early breaks: They wound up with the murder weapon and the killer's car even before learning there was a dead woman lying in a field among blackberry brambles.
A day before she was found, a man was seen waving a rifle in a park outside Gold Bar. A police officer heading to the scene stopped a car he saw weaving along U.S. 2. Roth was behind the wheel.
The cop smelled pot and saw two roach clips in the Nova's ashtray. A search turned up three baggies of dope and a loaded .22-caliber rifle. Roth went to jail, his car impounded. He was released the same day Jane Doe's body was laid out on the coroner's table.
Over the next few days, Roth gave up his secret piece by piece, confessing to a friend that he'd killed a hitchhiker. The man called a Seattle police officer, Roy Reed, who contacted sheriff's detective Kenneth Sedy. Detectives searched Roth's Nova. They found peacock feathers, shell casings and bungee cords. They already had the .22-caliber Marlin rifle with a clip and 59 rounds of ammunition.
It took a long time, but ballistic tests eventually showed that the slugs taken from Jane Doe's head matched those shot from Roth's gun.
Police came for Roth at 2 a.m. Jan. 18, 1979, at an apartment in Port Orchard. They arrested him for skipping out on the marijuana charge. On the ferry ride back, sheriff's detectives questioned Roth about the killing. He confessed.
A jury on Nov. 9, 1979, convicted Roth of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life behind bars.
His victim was in an unmarked grave at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park. Sunrise section, plot No. 2.
'They still don't know who the victim was."
That was the second paragraph of a newspaper story printed three weeks after the girl was found. Jane Doe's truth hasn't changed. Her life and the path she was on when she ran into Roth are voids in the green police file.
Detectives still don't know if she was thrown away long before Roth dumped her in a field. They don't know if she was running away from heavy fists or hell-bent on making her own way on the streets. They don't know why she got in the car with a stranger.
They hold on to the belief that someone is looking for her.
"I want to help the family -- to return her, to give her a proper burial," Scharf said.
From the beginning, the search for Jane Doe's identity has been like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box to guide the way.
A pathologist, soon after her body was found, removed the woman's hands and sent them to the FBI lab in Virginia, where forensic experts collected her fingerprints. The prints have never matched any on file in law enforcement databases.
Two weeks into the investigation, detectives released a sketch of the victim to newspapers. The crude, cartoonish drawing was pieced together from a catalogue of lips and noses and other facial features provided in an identity kit.
A forensic dentist in 1988 noted that two of the victim's front teeth had extensive dental restoration, the likely result of an accident. A search for matching dental records led nowhere.
In 1992 sheriff's detective John Hinds, a forensic artist, used more advanced techniques to reconstruct the girl's face. He took a plaster casting from her skull and painstakingly molded in clay the contours of muscle and tendons. He gave Jane Doe a face, and photographs of his reconstruction were circulated, to no avail.
Scharf cracked open the file last year after receiving a call from Missy DesLonde, a director with the Doe Network. Information about thousands of missing people swirls around in cyberspace. The Web-based group cross-references missing persons cases against unclaimed bodies. If there are enough similarities, the volunteer cybersleuths contact police.
Experts estimate about 110,000 people are considered missing in the U.S. The unidentified remains of about 60,000 people are buried in unmarked graves or stored in boxes in medical examiner offices across the country. Physical descriptions for only about 15 percent of those remains have been entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center.
"All these unidentified people deserve a name," DesLonde said. "Jane Doe was not only murdered, but her existence was wiped off the face of the earth."
Scharf knew advances in technology might make it possible to identify Jane Doe through DNA. He spoke with forensic experts, including anthropologist Dr. Kathy Taylor and George Adams, program coordinator with the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas.
The center, funded by the National Institute of Justice, employs leading forensic scientists to identify and analyze genetic samples from unidentified remains. They also collect samples submitted by the relatives of missing persons so their DNA can be tested against that of unclaimed victims.
Taylor and Adams agreed that the detectives should exhume Jane Doe's remains. Scientists might be able to extract a DNA sample from a bone to compare against those in the nation's Combined DNA Index System. They hoped a relative's DNA might be on file. Taylor also agreed to examine the remains for any clues that were overlooked.
Scharf and Heitzman got a court order last spring to unearth the woman's remains. Taylor's examination led her to believe that Jane Doe was between 15 and 21 years old. Up until then, detectives believed she was older.
Meanwhile, Scharf headed deeper into the maze of the missing and unnamed dead. He learned how easy it would have been for Jane Doe to slip through the cracks in the 1970s, when missing persons databases were in their infancy. They still have lots of holes.
The FBI's database now collects all missing persons reports. Every year the records are audited and law enforcement agencies around the country are asked to update their missing persons files, accounting for whether a person has been found. If police fail to respond, the missing person's file may be purged from the system.
"So many things can go wrong," Adams said.
Scharf found three possible matches in the FBI database. Jane Doe's DNA didn't match any of them. So far, Scharf has ruled out 56 missing persons. He's still working on four possible matches, including one woman missing from Canada.
He also requested officials at the FBI's National Crime Information Center run an offline search capturing data of all the missing women matching Jane Doe's physical traits, and whose cases were removed from the database between 1975 and 1980.
Scharf got back a list: 11,086 pages, 39,447 missing women. The list doesn't tell him if any were found or why their files were removed.
"It's an impossible list to search," Scharf said.
The detectives also turned to Roth -- the last person to see Jane Doe alive. They wanted his help with a new sketch that Hinds, now retired, planned to prepare of the girl. Roth agreed to let detectives grill him again, this time in search of anything that may lead to his victim's name.
"David served his time. He didn't have to help," Scharf said. "I think he wants her to be identified."
Roth is tall and solid. His speech is slow, cautious and stuffed with phrases picked up in prison therapy sessions and 12-step programs. In a recent interview he rolled his eyes in frustration as he explained he's not interested in headlines or talking about his family, including his older brother. Randy Roth was convicted in 1992 of murdering his wife.
David Roth doesn't want the attention.
"The girl's story is what we're after," he said. "I see the detectives going out of their way to find her identity. When these guys asked, I told them I'd do whatever I could. I can no longer help her, but I can help those who are looking for her. Some things we have to do."
Roth compared his cooperation now to obeying the speed limit even if there aren't any cops around. "You do things you know to be right because you're trying to do right," he said.
He admits spending years locked behind bars without thinking about what was right. He was still getting high and drunk more than a decade into his sentence, he said.
"I was stuck on stupid," he said. It's a phrase he often repeats.
But he wanted out of prison. A counselor told him he needed to face what he did. The parole board wanted to be assured Roth wouldn't kill again.
"I started putting myself in the shoes of the parole board. If it was somebody like me and I wasn't convinced they were changed, I wouldn't let them go. I have hurt someone the worst way you can hurt someone," Roth said.
He signed up for classes: victim empathy, anger management, avoiding negative peer pressure, consequences and actions.
He memorized self-help mantras and the words of prison counselors. They tumble around in his explanations of how he's changed and why people should believe this atonement.
Roth was on track to be released in the late 1990s. That was delayed when, two decades after he confessed to the murder, his story changed. He told a psychiatrist he'd repressed the true reason he strangled her. She threatened to have her two boyfriends hunt him down, he said.
He repeated the story in a letter he wrote in 1999 to a Snohomish County judge, asking for a release date.
"Before the remembrance of the pertinent detail I had been telling the board and also when I confessed that I thought I killed her because she had rejected my advances toward her," he wrote. "I had always had a deep feeling that that was not the real reason."
Instead of releasing him, the parole board thought he needed more time behind bars. He finally got out in May 2005 and hasn't had any problems with the law.
Last year detectives showed Roth a new sketch of Jane Doe. He told them he was surprised people were still searching. Before they released the sketch to the media, Roth helped them with a few details. There was a little change with her hairstyle, and he told them he didn't think the nose was quite right.
"I've been trying to remember what she looked like," he explained. "It's not something I try to forget. I wish I could. As the years go by, the details fog up."
During a November meeting, Chuck Wright, a Mill Creek mental health professional and a volunteer with the sheriff's cold case team, asked Roth if he'd ever considered hypnosis. Maybe the memories are tucked away where he can't get to them? Maybe with help they can be unlocked?
Roth wasn't prepared for the question. Uncertain how to answer, he looked to the detectives seated across from him.
He doesn't think she told him her name. "You pick up a stranger, a hitchhiker, she's not going to tell you her name. You're not trying to get personal," Roth said. "She didn't ask me my name."
He offered detectives these details: She didn't have an accent. She spoke in a monotone. She didn't appear to be educated. He thought she was in her 30s because there were wrinkles around her eyes. He thinks she was right-handed because she held her cigarette in that hand.
The detectives nodded at Roth. It's a delicate dance, asking a man to put himself back in the moment of murder.
Just as difficult is taking Roth to a moment he's escaped in the 32 years since he strangled a hitchhiker. He forfeited his freedom, his youth discarded behind prison walls.
Yet Roth hasn't faced those who really knew, or loved, or miss that girl, Doe, J. 1977.
"I've always wondered how to alleviate someone's sorrow. I don't know what you can actually say to someone who you've killed their loved one," Roth said. "I think I would try to convince them I'm no longer the person that did that and I've learned to value life."
As long as she's nameless, there is no one for him to apologize to.
There's no looking into someone's eyes and hearing grief when they say her name.
He has escaped the unshakable moment, when she becomes real, when she becomes someone's daughter or sister or girlfriend again. When her story finally is taken back from him.
That is the moment when the sum of her life will become more than the weight of his sins.
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A decades-long search for Jane Doe's real name
Published: November 02, 2009
By: Joel Moreno
KOMO News
SEATTLE -- For 35 years, a murder victim has only been known to investigators as "Jane Doe."
But one Snohomish County detective has never given up hope of determining her identity so that her family can finally bury any last doubts.
"She was just buried here in an unmarked grave," said Det. Jim Scharf.
In August 1977, a girl hitchhiked near Silver Lake. A man picked her up, tried to rape her, strangled her, then shot her in the head.
Blackberry pickers found the body days later.
"The trauma to the head and decomposition made her face unrecognizable," said Scharf.
Police caught the killer, and he went to prison. But investigators never could identify the girl.
The detective won't give up, and a crime lab in Fort Worth, Texas may hold the key.
The Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas is a world leader in DNA research.
Scharf sent Jane Doe's thigh bone to the DNA lab.
"And we could type them. We might give them a lead that would help them solve this case," said Dr. Bruce Budowle.
Lab technicians sawed the femur into smaller fragments, then mixed the shards with liquid nitrogen to powderize the bone and extract the DNA.
From a single bone, scientists can reconstruct not just height and weight, but also eye color, skin color and even the shape of a face.
"I could actually take a leg bone and no skull. If I had enough information, ( I could) create some imagery or some characteristics," said Budowle.
The lab reaches back across the decades to give answers to today's investigators. It has been able to identify more than 400 John and Jane Does so far.
But thousands of other cases are waiting to be solved.
"These are individuals," said the UNT center's George Adams of the unidentified bodies. "They will never be forgotten."
Snohomish County investigators have worked up a facial reconstruction for Scharf's Jane Doe. And UNT has her DNA profile.
Every DNA profile developed by UNT goes into a growing database called Namus. There, the data is checked against missing persons cases.
The lab's work is essential because when victims go unidentified, killers get away with murder. Gary Ridgway took advantage of mishandled missing persons cases to keep up his killing spree for years.
Jane Doe's killer was caught, but Scharf still wants to give the girl back her name.
So far, the UNT lab hasn't been able to identify Jane Doe. So for now, Scharf is relying on the clues he does have.
"This is a photograph of her watch," said Scharf.
Her clothes include a tank top with no bra, men's Mr. Sneaker-brand size-7 shoes.
Dental records show restorations on two front teeth, and experts place her between 15 and 21 years old.
Scharf still hopes he can track down the right family member to submit the sample and make the match. Only then can Jane Doe go home.
"If we get the word out there, we're going to solve this sooner or later," Scharf said.
Across the state, 112 unidentified bodies are waiting to be buried under their own name. Twenty eight of them are murder victims.
There are 40,000 such cases nationwide.
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