Who is Jane Doe? Napa officials try to identify woman killed a year ago

<p>She was a mother who cared about her appearance, and whoever killed her concealed her body in brush alongside a remote highway near Lake Berryessa in Napa County, possibly hoping she’d never be found.</p><p>This much investigators know.</p><p>But it’s the unknowns, starting with the woman’s identity, which is driving detectives to employ the latest in forensic technology to try and bring this mom home, and her killer to justice.</p><p>On Tuesday, investigators unveiled a three-dimensional likeness of the woman hoping someone will recognize her. Her skeletal remains were discovered on Mother’s Day weekend by an alert sheriff’s deputy on rural Highway 128, about two miles from Monticello Dam. </p><p>Investigators say the woman was killed but they declined to say how, saying that information if released could compromise the nearly two-month-old case. Positively identifying the woman, who was black, between the ages of 30 and 50 and possibly from Northern California, could be the breakthrough investigators have been searching for. </p><p>“What we’re asking .<TH>.<TH>. is for a family member or friend to be able to call us and say, ‘I know who that is,’” Napa County Sheriff’s Detective Chris Carlisle said Tuesday.</p><p>The clay bust of the woman was done by Mill Valley forensic artist Gloria Nusse, who provided reporters Tuesday with an overview of how she works. </p><p>Nusse said that after she made a mold of the woman’s skull, she used clay and other materials to approximate the woman's features, relying on scientific studies of the average depth of tissue at certain landmarks in the skull to guide her.</p><p>Nusse brought the skull with her Tuesday, making for a remarkable before-and-after portrait. She acknowledged that her work is as much art as it is science, and that it’s too much to expect the bust to be an exact replication of how the woman looked in life.</p><p>“It’s more of a science of recognition than, ‘That’s exactly her,’” Nusse said. </p><p>Other evidence found at the crime scene proved helpful in constructing the rendition. The woman had short, light-colored hair, and attached to it a black, collar-length hair weave. She had a piercing, possibly above the left side of her mouth, and had undergone extensive dental work, including a root canal and fillings.</p><p>Investigators also determined that she had French-cut fingernails made of acrylic, and that she had given birth at least once.</p><p>“She had the means to take care of herself,” Carlisle said.</p><p>Investigators have mined missing person databases, consulted with dentists and worked with an entomologist, the latter to try and determine more exactly when the woman died, as bugs can sometimes provide such clues. Authorities believe she was killed between six months to a year before the remains were found.</p><p>Detectives also are hoping that isotope technology can provide clues to where the woman may have lived or traveled. To date, the sheriff’s department has spent $3,000 on various technologies, an amount expected to climb as the case moves forward.</p><p>“Right now, we’re fortunate to pursue other forensic means financially,” Carlisle said.</p><p>Nusse said of the 15 forensic sculptures she’s done, seven have resulted in positive identifications.</p><p>Among those was 16-year-old Yesenia Nungaray, who was killed in 2003, her body found behind a Castro Valley restaurant. The girl died of asphyxiation after a rag was pushed down her throat. Her killer has never been found.</p><p>In the Napa County case, Deputy Mike Bartlett found a femur bone from the woman’s body on May 9 — the day before Mother’s Day — after he stopped to investigate a vehicle that was parked on a turnout of Highway 128, about a mile east of Wragg Canyon Road. The car turned out to be unrelated to the crime. </p><p>Bartlett said he found the woman’s skeleton down an embankment concealed in brush, and that to him, it was obvious she had been “dumped” there. There have been similar instances in the Lake Berryessa area.</p><p>But investigators say they aren’t sure whether that in fact was the case, or if the woman was killed at the turnout and left there.</p><p>The remains were clothed in a green polo shirt and hardly anything else, but investigators say they don’t know whether she had been sexually assaulted. One of her front teeth was fractured, but it’s unclear whether that was a result of the violence or something else. </p><p>That’s as much as detectives know. Napa County authorities previously used a forensic artist in an attempt to identify a man whose body was found 20 years ago on Mount Veeder. That case remains unsolved.</p><p>Anyone with information about the current case is asked to call 877-426-4847 or tips by e-mail to sherifftipline@co.napa.ca.us.</p>