Caledonia Jane Doe

On November 9, 1979, the body of a teenage girl was found in a cornfield in Caledonia, New York. She had two bullets in her head. Despite years of dedicated investigation by local and state officials, she has never been identified.

Because of cases such as this, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) website was established. It went online a few months ago with the Unidentified Decedent Reporting System.

This program, maintained by the National Institute of Justice and the U. S. Department of Justice, was designed to assist in finding names for deceased persons whose identities have not yet been established. It includes a database of cases from throughout the United States.

Anyone can search the Unidentified Decedent Reporting System database by going to https://identifyus.org/?p=help and selecting the desired state and county from the drop down lists. A direct link to local cases can be created, ready to copy and paste onto any web-site. This is ideal for local newspapers, county governments, law enforcement, and non-profit groups to add to their homepages.

Caledonia Jane Doe was probably between 13-19 years old. She was 5’ 3” and weighed about 120 pounds. According to the Doe Network website, “she had curly brown, shoulder-length hair which had been frosted about four months before her death. The frosted hair was in the process of growing out. She had brown eyes. She was tanned and had visible bikini lines. She had no distinguishing marks...She was wearing a boy’s multi-plaid, button-down shirt, tan corduroy pants, blue knee socks, and light blue panties. [Caledonia Jane Doe had] a white bra, brown lace-up, ripple-soled shoes, and a red nylon-lined man’s windbreaker with black stripes down the arms, marked with the inside label Auto Sports Products, Inc.”

There is a wealth of additional information about this girl on the Doe Network website.

The inscription on her gravestone reads: “Lest we forget an unidentified girl. November 9, 1979. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Email my good friend Todd Matthews at j.toddmattews@gmail.com for additional information about this case or the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.