Strangulation Victim Found in Georgia in 1988 Now Has a Name

Two state transportation workers found the woman’s body off to the side of Interstate 59 in Georgia, close to the Alabama border, in 1988. She had on Calvin Klein jeans, a blue thermal shirt, and a pinkie ring topped with a heart.

She had been strangled to death.

For years after the young woman was buried in an unmarked grave under the name Jane Doe, investigators worked to figure out who she was and who killed her.

Forensic artists produced sketches of what she would look like, and clay was used to create a rendering of her head. The FBI created a DNA profile that was added to a national missing persons database.

But for 34 years, the woman known as Rising Fawn Jane Doe remained nameless.

That changed recently when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation decided to once again take a fresh look at the case, this time using a relatively new investigative technique called genealogical DNA, which has cracked dozens and dozens of mysteries.

“We realized as science changes we knew of a new process,” Joe Montgomery of the GBI said at a news conference on Thursday.

Experts from a company called Othram were able to compare Jane Doe’s DNA profile against millions of samples of DNA that now exist in databases thanks to services like Ancestry.com and create a likely family tree.

That led them to a family in Norton Shores, Michigan, where a fingerprint match was used to confirm that Jane Doe was Stacey Lyn Chahorski, who had been reported missing in 1989.

A few months earlier, Chahorski had called her mother, Mary Beth Smith, to say that she was in North Carolina and was making her way back to Michigan.

She never arrived, and her mother never heard from her again.

Once the identification was made, FBI Agent Tim Burke and other law enforcement traveled to Norton Shore to inform Smith “and bring her a little bit of peace.”

They were also able to give her the jewelry that Jane Doe had been wearing when she was killed. And soon, her body will be returned to Michigan for burial closer to home.

Police said their work is not done, though.

“Today marks the day where we hunt for the killer now,” Montgomery said, adding that he is hopeful investigators can find that person.

“We had no identification for the victim, so we had no starting point. Now we have a starting point.”