The police sketch of the deceased, now known as Schuylkill County Jane Doe 1986.
Originally published on July 30, 2022.
The dead woman had a friend.
Her body, found off Interstate 81 in Kline Twp. on April 8, 1986, was completely naked except for a silver friendship ring “with a Florentine finish.”
She was Black, between the ages of 18 and 25, measured 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed an estimated 108 pounds. She had a scar on her right cheek.
For the last 36 years, she has been known to investigators and the public as Schuylkill County Jane Doe 1986. To the person who gave her that ring, she was more than that. She was somebody’s friend.
“That was my first dead body as D.A.,” said Claude A.L. “Cal” Shields, Schuylkill County district attorney from 1986-2002. “Not the last. … We did make a pretty good effort to find out who she was.”
Two female unidentified decedents, commonly referred to as “Jane Does,” have haunted Schuylkill County for decades. Very little is known about them, and their cases have fallen into obscurity. They have no known loved ones to mourn them. They have no known friends to raise awareness of their plight. They don’t even have their names.
Investigators wonder if advances in DNA technology, which have led to the resolution of other cold cases in the region, might change that in the coming years.
“They’re hard to forget,” retired pathologist Richard Bindie, who performed Jane Doe’s autopsy, said about the unidentified. “These are interesting cases, always. If the Jane Does are decomposed and all that, that’s a major problem. If a Jane Doe is fresh, you know, that’s easy. You can get DNA, you can get everything.”
According to an article in the Pottsville Republican, Jane Doe died of a cocaine overdose.
“There was some talk that it was someone from Harrisburg, but it was pretty much just speculation,” Shields said. “If you were driving from Harrisburg and had someone who maybe died from an overdose, or maybe provided the drugs,” such a dark and secluded location would be fitting to dump the body, he said.
The person or people who committed the deed, however, did not realize that the area was adjacent to a railroad bed. The body was discovered by a boy riding a bicycle.
An anonymous state trooper quoted in the article said there was a puncture mark on her right arm which could have been from a syringe. He also said the woman showed no signs of regular cocaine use, and it was possible that the drugs were injected into her system by someone else.
“She didn’t appear to be a derelict person,” Shields said. “She appeared to be a person who was in good physical condition.”
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), Jane Doe had “traumatic injuries on her body,” but Shields has no memory of this.
“Let me tell you, I’ve seen a lot of bodies,” he said. “Maybe I’m confusing them.”
Bindie remembers her body being badly decomposed.
“She looked like she was running from New York or some other place,” he said.
Many of those who were involved in the initial investigation have died. Due to the sheer number of people who drive on I-81 any given day, there are many places Jane Doe could have been from.
Shields doubts that the circumstances of her death will be solved, but has hope that her identity might be discovered someday.
Jane Doe was buried in the county-owned Rest Haven Cemetery in Schuylkill Haven. Her small stone bears the simple inscription “Jane Doe 1986.” On the website Find a Grave, where users can give virtual condolences, the user Tasha left these succinct words: “Known only unto God.”
Anyone with information about Schuylkill County Jane Doe 1986 is asked to call the state police in Frackville at 570-874-5300. They declined to be interviewed for this article, saying that they do not comment on individual cases.
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