The Mystery of Mountain Jane Doe

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

In the summer of 1969, a young woman was found dead off a remote mountain trail in Harlan, Kentucky. She’d been stabbed multiple times. Her identity was a mystery, so locals referred to her as Mountain Jane Doe. Decades later, a woman from the area takes up the cause of identifying the murdered woman, and her quest for answers leads investigators to a hillside grave and a DNA lab, bringing some long-awaited answers.

Mountain Jane Doe is one of more than 13,000 in a national database of unidentified dead. There are no national laws requiring coroners or law enforcement to use the database, and as a result, cases fall through the cracks and family members are left in the dark about their loved ones.

An exhumation leads to a series of unexpected revelations about who Mountain Jane Doe was and why she might have been killed. Her case speaks to the complexity – and importance – of opening cold cases and using DNA science to try to solve them.

But as one mystery is solved, another remains unanswered: Who killed her?

This episode originally was broadcast April 1, 2017. We updated this show Jan. 26, 2019.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.
0:05.7	I'm Al Lezen.
0:08.4	Karen Steipes was around a year old when her mother went missing.
0:12.0	You know, I had to suffer through my whole life because of whatever happened, you know, with my mother.
0:20.8	I wish that someone would tell me, you know, let me know what happened.
0:26.0	Les Rugg's son disappeared on a fishing trip.
0:28.7	My son, Kyle Rugg, is 20 years old.
0:31.5	He disappeared on a Wednesday, March the 4th, 2015.
0:35.7	Alice Alamandaris, his father, went missing in Houston.
0:38.3	His regular phone calls to his daughter just stopped cold.
0:42.3	My dad was reported missing in the end of June 2002.
0:46.3	People vanish.
0:47.3	Right now, around 90,000 men, women, and children are missing in the United States.
0:53.3	These are just a few of the family members of missing people we spoke to across the country.
0:58.0	There's no way to describe what it feels like to not know where someone is or what happened to them.
1:04.1	The worst part about it is not knowing.
1:08.0	Unfortunately, some of those missing people will never come home, like Alice's dad. His body was
1:14.4	unidentified for 10 years and was buried as a John Doe just a few miles from his home. His
1:21.0	daughter had no idea what happened to him for all those years. We've done a lot of reporting
1:26.5	about Jane and John Doe's and the families they leave behind.
1:31.0	We found there are no national laws requiring coroners or police to enter unidentified cases
1:37.2	into a national database that could help send them home.
	...

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