The remains of a woman who was found dead in 1946 were exhumed in Oregon this week as officials try to solve the state’s oldest unidentified person case.
The remains of “Oak Grove Jane Doe” were discovered in a burlap sack along the Williamette River in April 1946, according to a news release from the Oregon State Police. More remains were found near Williamette Falls and the McLoughlin Bridge later that year, and clothing believed to belong to the woman was located in the Clackamas River, state police said.
Examiners determined the victim was a woman, likely between the ages of 30 and 50, who had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and was dismembered after death, state police said. Detectives believed the remains had been put in several burlap sacks and discarded in the river, police said.
While the case garnered national attention, the woman was never identified, police said. Critical evidence, including the remains, went missing from law enforcement custody in the 1950s, halting further investigation, state police said. The case was reviewed again by the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office in 2008, but no progress could be made without the body, according to police. The woman is Oregon’s oldest unidentified person, state police said.
Recently, the Oregon State Police’s Human Identification Program learned that the remains were likely buried in Oregon City’s Mountain View Cemetery, KION reported. A photo shared by the Oregon State Police showed a stone grave marker reading “Unknown Woman 1946.”
On Monday, state police said they had exhumed the woman’s “degraded” remains.
The body will undergo “advanced forensic testing and analysis,” the Oregon State Police said on social media. This process will hopefully “finally give her a name” and bring “resolution to this decades-old case,” the agency said.
“For decades, this case was presumed impossible to resolve, and now, after nearly 80 years, we are hopeful we can restore this victim’s name and return her identity to history,” forensic anthropologist Hailey Collord-Stalder said in the police statement.
