Who Killed JoAnne? Black Woman Identified as Slain Jane Doe from 50 Years Ago

For the past five decades, police sought to identify a Jane Doe who was the victim of a cold case murder in Chicago while an Ohio family wondered where their loved one had disappeared to. Finally, each side have had their questions answered.

In 1976, the woman was found in a ditch alongside a rural road in Grundy County with her face covered by a sweater and trash bag with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. Officials believed at the time she may have been killed in another location before her remains were discarded. On Thanksgiving Day, after officials failed to identify her, she was buried in an unmarked grave while her family spent the holiday wondering where she was, per ABC 7 Chicago. The case went cold until 2017, when DNA testing had become far more advanced. Only then was her body exhumed for investigation.

Investigators were able to determine at least one side of her family moved to Cincinnati, the report says. The Grundy County Coroner’s Office then collaborated with the DNA Doe Project to essentially build a family tree back to the Jane Doe, a process that took years, per WLWT.

This summer, investigators announced the remains belonged to that of JoAnne Vickie Smith, a Black lady from Ohio between 15 and 27 years old.

Read the reaction from Smith’s family via CBS News:

“I remember that morning that she went missing,” said Ronnie Smith, her brother.

Ronnie said JoAnne was his older sister and the “apple of my mother’s eye.” She went missing from their family home in Cincinnati in 1976 and was never heard from again. Ronnie was just 8 years old when his sister disappeared.

“That wasn’t something that was normal in our household,” Ronnie Smith said. “No one stayed out at night. That just didn’t happen, not at my mother’s home. I can’t imagine anything more devastating to be buried in an unmarked grave.”

Smith said while he has closure knowing what happened to his sister, his focus is now on finding the person responsible.

“We will always believe, and we will believe, that whoever perpetrated this crime against her, if they’re alive, they will be brought to justice,” he said.

Authorities said it wasn’t just the lack of high-end DNA technology that stalled the effort to identify Smith but the fact she was adopted and appeared to change her name several times. The only other piece of information was that she worked as a housekeeper for a Marriott Hotel ahead of her killing, her family said. According to CBS, her remains will be placed with that of her deceased parents.

The Root left a message to lead investigator Brandon Johnson with the Grundy County Coroner’s Office for information on next steps in the case.