St. Louis Jane Doe(1983) — One of Missouri’s Most Notorious Murders
A little girl was murdered in the 1980’s. To this day, her identity remains a mystery.
Discovery of the Body
On February 28th, 1983, two men went looking for scrap metal in the basement of a vacant Victorian apartment building in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. One of them lit a lighter so they could see what was around them, and they were shocked by what they saw: a girl’s headless body.
They immediately contacted the police. The police initially believed that the girl was a sex worker or a drug addict from Cabanne Courts, a housing project nearby with a sketchy reputation. However, when they turned the body over, they were horrified to see that she had not reached puberty yet.
She was wearing only a yellow v-neck sweater, loosely fitted, with chipped red (sometimes reported to be also purple) nail polish on her fingernails. Her wrists were bound behind her back with red and white nylon rope.
Mold growing in the neck wound showed that she had been in the basement for several days before being found. There was no blood found there, so it’s believed that she was killed elsewhere and dumped there.
Investigation
The autopsy found that the little girl had met a brutal end. She had been raped, strangled to death, and posthumously decapitated with a large-bladed knife. Green paint was found in the neck wound.
Jane Doe was black with a medium to dark complexion, and was estimated to have been 8–11 years old at her time of death. She was tall for her age, standing at roughly 4’ 10”/147cm to 5’ 4”/162.56cm, and weighing around 61lbs/27.67kg to 70lbs/31.75kg. An autopsy found no signs of previous abuse, and that the little girl’s stomach was empty.
Many sources report that she had spina bifida occulta. According to Doe Network, she did not. Despite efforts to find it, her head was unfortunately never recovered.
Forensic testing of her bones revealed that she was not local to St. Louis. It found that she had possibly spent most of her life in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and West Virginia. Later testing showed she may have also been from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
Shortly after Jane Doe was found, all-points bulletins were sent out throughout the country by police. Nothing came of it. School attendance records were checked at various nearby schools, with many children fitting her description being looked at. Nothing came of this, either.
DNA was collected from 12 different families. None matched Jane Doe. She was added to the FBI’s CODIS database of DNA.
Just a few months after the discovery of the body, a woman came into the police department and frantically claimed to have met the killer. She said that a man, living just a few blocks from where Jane Doe was found, had shown her a machete and a human skull.
The police obtained a search warrant and forced their way into the man’s apartment. They discovered innocuous explanations for both. The machete was a “novelty piece” and described as easily bendable and incapable of decapitation. The skull was purchased from a high school teacher in California. This was a false lead.
To the dismay of investigators, no evidence was found for who the killer was. A white substance found on her stomach was believed to be semen, but testing revealed that it contained no DNA. A pubic hair found on her was tested but did not provide enough DNA to identify anyone.
Claims from Psychics
Investigators joined a seánce with a group of supposed psychics. In the end, the psychics instructed the investigators to call the Coast Guard, claiming that the little girl’s head was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing came of this claim.
Investigators also agreed to have the case aired on a show called “Sightings”, which covers supernatural and occult topics. Before the episode was recorded, investigators mailed the evidence to a psychic in Florida at her request. The evidence was lost in the mail and never recovered.
Tip from Sharon Nolte
In 2002, a woman from Kansas City named Sharon Nolte called detectives with a tip. She claimed that the little girl’s name was Shannon Johnson, that she was part of the Chippewa people, and that the killer was a drifter living in southern Texas.
Sharon claimed to know the killer, and even invited him into her house and collected his DNA for evidence. She also investigated the case herself for years prior, having visited a reservation in Minnesota to collect DNA from a woman she believed to be Jane Doe’s relative.
She claimed to have spent $23,000 on the case, $4,500 having gone to a private lab to test the DNA she found against Jane Doe’s. The test returned negative, but she maintains that her beliefs on the case are correct. She also claims that her story was not taken seriously by detectives.
Investigators claimed that they appreciated her tips. However, her story just didn’t seem plausible to them.
Tommy Lynn Sells
In 2013, detectives traveled to Texas to interview a killer on death row, Tommy Lynn Sells. He had bragged about killing girls all over the country while he used trains to travel between the west coast and the east coast.
Despite his wild claims, detectives ruled him out as a possible killer of Jane Doe. They could not prove that he was in St. Louis or anywhere in Missouri at the time when she was killed.
Recent Lead
In 2023, a Reddit post offered a new lead in the case. A user under the name “finding-jeanetta” claimed that their older half-sister, 9-year-old Jeanetta Brooks, had gone missing in February of 1983. She was last seen on Valentine’s Day of that year.
The author of the post and their sister had lived with their maternal grandmother in Indiana after their mother was incarcerated in 1981. The missing girl’s father, who had ties to the St. Louis area, had picked up the girl from the house shortly after New Year’s.
After the mother was released in 1986, the father would not allow her to see or speak to her missing daughter. The identity of the user has not been found, though detectives are working towards finding it.
Speculation
Due to the lack of a composite sketch, and many dead-end leads, we can only speculate on who did it and who Jane Doe was. It is most commonly speculated that she was killed by a family member. Sadly, not much else can be speculated, due to the minimal information on Jane Doe. She remains unidentified to this day.
This case is one of the more hopeless ones I have covered. Detectives did everything in their power to identify this little girl, without any success. There was also some mishandling of the case, with the evidence having been mailed out.
The stress put on the detectives cannot be understated. One of them had nightmares for years after, another having been hospitalized for migraines. I can only imagine how the little girl’s loved ones must feel, having not known what happened to her.
Whoever this little girl was, wherever she came from, I hope she gets her name back one day. May she rest in peace.
If you have any information on this case, please call Detective Daniel Sweeney at 314–444–5371. You may also submit a tip through this link: https://www.missingkids.org/poster/NCMU/1104360/1
Sources
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/unidentified-persons/jane-doe-44
