Princess Doe and Cali Doe / Other child 'Does'

[Claire]

Reading the Little Miss 1565 thread in another section reminded me of these two poor girls that were murdered and remain unidentified. I did a search and nothing came up, but if I missed the right place, merge/move please.

These two girls' cases are unrelated to each other, save that they were given 'Princess' and 'Cali' instead of 'Jane' so that they wouldn't just blend into the other Jane Does out there and be forgotten about. Of course there are other child 'Does' out there, but I post about these two specifically because they stand out in a way with their special names, but do feel free to discuss any others below! I haven't included the Boy in the Box because I believe there is already a thread on him.

Princess Doe

*Princess Doe composite sketch* As far as I know, there are no actual dead pics of her, only this sketch and some age progression images. Believe me, I've looked. :P

From Wikipedia:
"Princess Doe is the name given to an unidentified homicide victim found in Blairstown, New Jersey, United States. The body was a young white female between the ages of 14 and 18. Her face had been bludgeoned beyond recognition. The approximate height of the victim was 5'2" and her weight was 110 lbs. The body was discovered at the Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown early on the morning of Thursday, July 15, 1982.As of October 2009, Princess Doe still remains unidentified. No arrests were ever made in the case. The Warren County Prosecutors office is the law enforcement agency investigating the case and still considers the case active. The body was buried in the Cedar Ridge Cemetery, not far from where she was discovered, in January 1983. The remains of Princess Doe were exhumed in 1999 so that samples could be collected for DNA testing and the body was re-buried in the same grave.
On July 15, 2007 a graveside memorial service was held for the 25th anniversary of Princess Doe being discovered. Over 100 citizens attended as well as several reporters. The case has been featured as part of an HBO special as well is being covered thoroughly in the print media, including the New York Times. The case is also featured on the America's Most Wanted Website. Currently, there are efforts underway to get the case renewed media attention in hopes of somebody recognizing Princess Doe.
Lt. Kranz (now retired), the lead investigator from the Blairstown Police Department, coined the name, 'Princess Doe' early in the investigation and also managed to get the case covered extensively in the media. The case was used as the impetus for recording unidentified crime victims in the NCIC database at the national level. Princess Doe became the first such case entered by the FBI director."
http://url=http://www.princessdoe.org/ Princess Doe website

Cali Doe:
Cali Doe is the name given to an unidentified homicide victim found in Caledonia, New York on November 9, 1979. With the use of pollen testing it is thought she came from Arizona, California,South Florida, or Mexico.
The body was that of a young female probably between the ages of 13 and 19, estimated birth years are 1958-1967. The height and weight of the victim were estimated to be 5'3" and 120 lbs, respectively. She had curly brown shoulder length hair that was frosted and growing out. She had visible tan lines. Before her death she had eaten corn, meat and potatoes possibly from a diner inLima, NY.^[1][2].
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1ufny.html Cali Doe on the Doe Network
WARNING! DEAD PIC IN THIS LINK: http://www.co.livingston.state.ny.us...fs/JaneDoe.pdf

I just find these two cases so heartbreaking I just imagine their parents/loved ones being worried sick that their little girl was out there somewhere, and possibly didn't even know that they were dead.

[Mammy]

I have always found the Doe cases to be so sad, especially the babies and children. You think that someone that has a loved one that age who is missing would be looking for them, but you never know if the family is responsible for the disappearance in the first place or the older ones may be runaways. I spend a lot of time on the Doe Network, Charley Project, and the section of Websleuths that tries to identify unclaimed remains. The people on Websleuths were actually the ones who led to the identification of Tawni Mazzone who had been a Jane Doe. I am glad to see someone else who is interested in these types of cases.

[RiaBrown]

Me, too, Mammy. Here in Kansas City there was a "Doe" case some years ago. A little girl was beaten to death and beheaded, and when her remains were found, she was dubbed "Precious Doe." She was finally identified as Erica Green, and her mother and stepfather were found guilty of her murder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_Doe

[rjbrasher]

i remember that case ria, that was so sad too

[RiaBrown]

It was. And to think it happened so close to home. I live roughly 15-20 minutes from Kansas City proper. It was all over the news for months. I don't think I ever heard what the mother and stepfather were sentenced to.

[Mammy]

Erica was a beautiful little girl who never stood a chance from the start. She was born while her mom was serving time and had eight other siblings at the time of her death. She was beaten to death by her stepdad and beheaded and her mom and stepdad's cousin helped him dispose of her body. If she was still alive, she would be fifteen years old in two days. Her stepdad got life without parole and her mom is serving twenty five years. She got a plea deal for testifying against the stepdad.

[RiaBrown]

It's such a sad case, Mammy. From what the newspapers out here said, her stepdad used hedge clippers to cut off her head.

[RiaBrown]

They found her remains on my son's birthday, and she and my son would've been about two weeks apart in age.

[Mammy]

It is a really sad case. It's horrible enough to brutally kill a child, but to decapitate her with hedge clippers takes it to a whole different level. I don't know why the stepdad didn't get the death penalty. It was after her sketch came out that her grandpa called the authorities and said the sketch resembled his granddaughter that he hadn't seen for a while. That must have been a hard phone call for him to make. So, she was identified in much the same way that Baby Grace (Riley Ann Sawyers) was, a grandparent that saw the police sketch and thought it resembled their grandchild. I can't even imagine.

[Claire]

I forgot all about Precious Doe! Poor little girl. Cutting off her head with hedge clippers? That's sick! As if killing the little girl wasn't enough.

[Mammy]

Her murder seriously upset me. I was so relieved when she was finally identified that I was bawling. She was a beautiful little girl and had such a short and horrible life. Poor little baby girl.

[rjbrasher]

my god that is horrible! that little angel

[RiaBrown]

It is a really sad case. It's horrible enough to brutally kill a child, but to decapitate her with hedge clippers takes it to a whole different level. I don't know why the stepdad didn't get the death penalty. It was after her sketch came out that her grandpa called the authorities and said the sketch resembled his granddaughter that he hadn't seen for a while. That must have been a hard phone call for him to make. So, she was identified in much the same way that Baby Grace (Riley Ann Sawyers) was, a grandparent that saw the police sketch and thought it resembled their grandchild. I can't even imagine.

Me, either. How horrible for the grandparents! Here in Kansas City, they did everything they could for so many years to get her identified. From a sketch to a clay sculpture. Even though she has a name now, she will forever be "Precious Doe" out here.

Her murder seriously upset me. I was so relieved when she was finally identified that I was bawling. She was a beautiful little girl and had such a short and horrible life. Poor little baby girl.

Same here. I hoped her family finally found some closure. I don't think I ever knew about her birthfather, if he was in the picture or not.

my god that is horrible! that little angel

I cannot fathom how an adult can harm a child, much less beat a child to death and then use hedge clippers to behead her. She was such a precious little princess, it's just not fair. I know I sound like a child, but it's not fair!

[rjbrasher]

oh no, its totally not fair. it makes me so damn mad, when i hear about people abusing, killing and mutilating a child! And most of the time its out of jealousy. Its like you fucking serious?!?! grow the fuck up, don't take it out on a child! I just don't get it and you hear too much in the news about it. its just terribly sad. And if its not a child its a puppy or a kitten. Its awful when an adult gets the horrible end of it, but its just a whole another level when its kids and animals ugh!

[Mammy]

I agree that it is awful for anyone to be abused and mistreated, but at least another adult has somewhat of a chance to defend themselves. I can't stand crimes against the defenseless like children, elderly people, mentally challenged people, and animals.

It seems odd to me that Caledonia Jane Doe hasn't been identified after all of these years. The sketches of her are well done and there is even an actual morgue picture to look at. She was very young and was found in 1979. How could a young girl go unidentified for over three decades? Surely she would have siblings, cousins, friends, or other loved ones who have wondered all these years what happened to her. I find it hard to believe that a girl that age had nobody who cared about her.

[rjbrasher]

i remember her, its a shame to go 33 years with no one even identifying her. makes me wonder if she was maybe born and raised in the streets? the john doe that kills me is the story of the boy in the box. from years ago

[Claire]

It seems odd to me that Caledonia Jane Doe hasn't been identified after all of these years. The sketches of her are well done and there is even an actual morgue picture to look at. She was very young and was found in 1979. How could a young girl go unidentified for over three decades? Surely she would have siblings, cousins, friends, or other loved ones who have wondered all these years what happened to her. I find it hard to believe that a girl that age had nobody who cared about her.

From what I've read I think that she was a runaway and/or from the streets. There were some truckers that claimed they saw her trying to hitch rides. Still, I agree, wouldn't there be SOMEONE who at least knew her name?

[Mammy]

I've wondered what kind of life Caledonia Jane Doe had before she was murdered. Her teeth were in really poor condition for someone so young and the summary on the Doe Network said that it looked like she had never had any dental care. I hope she can be identified and not go without a name forever. Nobody deserves that. There are cases solved that have been around for decades so hopefully that will happen for her, too. Dorothy Gay Howard was classified as Boulder Jane Doe for 55 years before her remains were identified in 2009, so it's possible to identify remains that are really old.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_13658937

Dawn Birnbaum was a Jane Doe in Pennsylvania. I'm not sure how long she was unidentified before it was discovered who she was. She was 17 years old and living in a boarding school for behavior problems and ran away from there. She was found strangled to death laying on a snow bank next to a highway. It was a period of time before she was identified and the community had a funeral for her and named her Spring Dawn so she wouldn't have to be a Jane Doe. That was quite a coincidence since her first name really was Dawn, but they didn't know that at the time. A truck driver was finally charged with her murder when some of Dawn's hair was found in his cab.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...r&GRid=9271441

[tarsier]

Me, too, Mammy. Here in Kansas City there was a "Doe" case some years ago. A little girl was beaten to death and beheaded, and when her remains were found, she was dubbed "Precious Doe." She was finally identified as Erica Green, and her mother and stepfather were found guilty of her murder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_Doe

Kansas City needs commended on the way thery kept that case in the national news until she was identified.

[Mammy]

I agree! A lot of times it is luck to get the news to show anything to begin with and it's extraordinary to get continued coverage. It is sad when anyone is murdered and not everyone gets the same amount of media attention. The murders of Caylee Anthony, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, and other high profile cases are heartbreaking, but so are the other cases that don't get the media coverage. There are plenty of missing and murdered people who most people have never even heard of.

[Pachamama]

I wonder if Caledonia Jane Doe was illegal. If she was from Mexico, or perhaps Central America, the people who cared about her may not known what have happened. Or if her family was illegal also, they may have been worried about being arrested or deported if they came forward.

[RiaBrown]

That's very possible.

[Claire]

Yeah, I agree too, that's very plausible. Doe Network states that she could be from Mexico, so maybe she crossed the border and got up to New York, either by herself or with family. I don't think that she was killed somewhere else and just dumped there, since a waitress had seen her the night before in a diner, so she had to have been killed in the area. She could have been from a poor background, explaining the lack of dental work and the poor condition of her teeth. If she was by herself, then her family may have never learned what happened to her, or she was an orphan/on her own. If she was with family, then either they didn't want to come forth for fear of being sent away or the like, or maybe (this is terrible to think about, but it does unfortunately happen) her family did away with her in one way or another.

These things really get your mind going with all the possibilities!

[Mammy]

I've always felt like she was a runaway who may have traveled to different places by hitchhiking rides with semi truck drivers. It would be easy for a total stranger to pick her up, murder her, and dump her somewhere and be long gone before she was found. If no evidence was left behind, it would be extremely hard to find out who killed her if it was a random murder that the killer had no personal connection to. Not only that, there are no dental records available for comparison and the clay reconstructions of unidentified people aren't always accurate. Not every family goes looking for a runaway if they have done it several times in the past and may have figured that she was living somewhere else and didn't want any contact with her family.

[Mammy]

I know there are several of us who spend time on the Doe Network and Charley Project sites and I'm sure most of us have seen this reconstruction there and elsewhere. She finally has her name back.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/03/..._office_4.html

[AllyTheHag]

I know there are several of us who spend time on the Doe Network and Charley Project sites and I'm sure most of us have seen this reconstruction there and elsewhere. She finally has her name back.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/03/..._office_4.html

Wow, something about this story seems very odd to me -- an 18 year-old girl, with a mother, siblings, job, presumably friends, etc. up and disappears one day and no one tries to find out what happened to her, calls the police or even bothers to file a missing person's report? And the explanation is: "They weren't the kind of family who sat down for dinner every night. One of them could be away for several months." Uh ... she was "away" for thirteen years!

And, what happened to her belongings? Wouldn't someone, at some point, figure out that this girl hasn't been home in weeks and that her personal effects are still there ... that would be a big clue that the person isn't just "away."

According to one of the comments, the family was under the impression that the mother had filed a missing person's report, but the mother never did. This family's "relationships and dynamics" were very weird, indeed.

[Mammy]

I agree that it is a very strange story and a lot of it doesn't make much sense and is hard to understand. I felt like nobody must have cared for her very much to do very little to nothing to find out what happened to her when she disappeared. I have seen her reconstruction on several different sites over the years and was stunned to see that she had finally been identified. She was a pretty girl in real life and it's a shame she died so young. Her life didn't seem all of that great beforehand either.

[intothelight]

I have always found the Doe cases to be so sad, especially the babies and children. You think that someone that has a loved one that age who is missing would be looking for them, but you never know if the family is responsible for the disappearance in the first place or the older ones may be runaways. I spend a lot of time on the Doe Network, Charley Project, and the section of Websleuths that tries to identify unclaimed remains. The people on Websleuths were actually the ones who led to the identification of Tawni Mazzone who had been a Jane Doe. I am glad to see someone else who is interested in these types of cases.

Me too Mammy. It's terrible that people would kill other people but even more terrible and sad that they would feel the need to strip the body of identification. I too spend a lot of time on the Doe Network.

[VeuveClicquotNJ]

I imagine there is a thread on this already, but I did a search & could locate it. Could someone please merge-a-roonie?

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/warr...oser_to_i.html




VCNJ~

[Mammy]

I've seen it mentioned in another thread with unidentified people, but I don't think she has a thread of her own. I sure hope this case is about to be solved. I've kept my eye on it, hoping to see her identified. Hopefully it will happen soon!

http://www.princessdoe.org/

I hope you don't mind that I added a link to her website.

[VeuveClicquotNJ]

Of course not, mammy - thank you so much!

VCNJ~

[Mammy]

You're welcome! I'm excited and hope they find out who she is. If Boulder Jane Doe could be identified as Dorothy Gay Howard after fifty four years, hopefully this girl will soon have her name back, too.

[Linnie]

NJ marked an even older mystery milestone in March-- the 125th anniversary of the discovery of a young woman found beaten and slashed in Rahway, and buried in the cemetery there with her own specially-marked tombstone. In its day, the horrific crime and the attempts to identify the unfortunate lady (believed to be a German immigrant, and found with a full market basket including eggs) and her assassin became an international cause celebre. It has even become one of those bloody murders suggested as an early "Ripper" killing (assuming "Jack" commuted back and forth over "the Pond.")

http://www.nj.com/independentpress/i...unknown_w.html

[SomeChick]

I imagine there is a thread on this already, but I did a search & could locate it. Could someone please merge-a-roonie?

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/warr...oser_to_i.html
VCNJ~

Sure thing.

Although with requesting a merge this way, there's no guarantee that any mod will see it. Want to make sure a thread you just created gets merged with it's predecessor? And try as you might, you're unable to find the first one? Just post a link to your new thread and let us know it's a dupe in the Merge Me Please thread in the Feedback and support section.

I know. People here have gotten into a bad habit of asking in threads. But we need people to post their merge requests in the Merge Me thread because it's where the mods look on a daily basis for posts about threads that need to be merged.

Posting in that thread also lets us know when members are trying but are just unable to find what they're looking for. That in turn causes fewer misunderstandings and fewer cards to be doled out. And this place is huuuuuge now. New members coming in all the time. They see notes left in threads for moderation requests of some sort and think that muat be the way you do that. Yet it does not seem to occur to the requesters how many threads are posted on this forum. We can't possibly read them all. Especially not every post in every thread. So please take a sec to post your requests in Merge Me Please once you post a thread you think is a dupe. I'd much rather helo everyone find what they're looking for than have misunderstandings or dole out cards when someone sought but did not find.


Thanks for understanding everyone.

[AliWProk]

Caledonia Jane Doe was identified as Tammy Alexander from Florida: http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S3687662.shtml?cat=565

[ktkatinmn]

This is fabulous news...

Side note:

I hadn't read any other articles on this case, but I just hate it when an article lists a city and/or county, but not a state... This article notes the news station in Rochester...how many states have a Rochester - Including mine which is pretty prominent thanks to the Mayo Clinic. The specific article states that the girl was from Florida, and notes the town/county name she was found in and a town name she was buried in...sucks when you have to go looking for the simplest piece of info!!! Ahhh...New York - Google search of the area code for the phone number for the News station 'contact us' info - which may or may not be the state that this all occurred in. Gah!

[AliWProk]

It is complicated. She was found in Caledonia NY, which is 23 miles SW of Rochester. It is in Livingston County. Her family is from Florida, and the search for her began from there (Brooksville Florida, where a classmate was trying to find her). Her sister was found in Panama City, FL, and gave a DNA sample. Shortly after the missing persons report was filed and appeared in NamUS, a man in Calfrnia on WebSleuths recognized her picture and put it together that Cali Doe was the same person. He emailed the Livingston Co. Sheriffs Office the info; the victim's DNA was compared to her sister's, and they had identified Tammy Jo.

[ktkatinmn]

Thanks for clarifying, AliWProk.

[pkstracy]

Sad that her family never reported her missing, it took a classmate to file the report, makes me wonder what her home life was really like.

[AliWProk]

Interview with Tammy Jo's sister: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/...rder/22598871/