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DAVID: Hey, Mr. Atchison, I need to pick up my body. Appreciate you. MR ATCHISON: Yes, sir. DAVID: Thank you. This box contains the remains of our victim that we have yet to identify. Her entire body is in this little bitty box. We call her "Tyler Jane Doe". She's been in there for 38 years.
October 1st, 1985, we had a mowing crew up on Interstate 20, and they saw the skull. So myself and two other detectives went up there, and we saw something sticking out of the ground, and as you pulled on it, then you pulled up the shorts. And then under the shorts was the shirt. That says Top Rail Country Music, Dallas, Texas. We searched the area, that's when we came up with her watch and butterfly earring. She was placed out there nude. All her clothes was in a pile right beside her.
It was very evident that she was murdered. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about this case. It's been 38 years that I've been trying to identify this young girl. Somewhere there is a family that's missing their daughter their loved one. So I want to identify her. It's time to put her to rest. Tyler's a great little town, I grew up here, I've watched it grow from brick streets to paved highways. I've seen single lane roads now go to double highways.
Every time that I go to Dallas, I drive within a couple of hundred yards of the location we found her in. That's a constant reminder that we haven't identified her. NARRATOR: Tyler Jane Doe's body was found in 1985 by the side of the I-20, 70 miles southeast of Dallas, just outside Tyler. David Turner was one of the first homicide detectives on the scene. DAVID: We actually parked up there, where those trucks are coming down.
We walked up and we saw the body laying there and the skull, 80 foot off the interstate. We walked this whole area just thinking that, well maybe she did have a purse or she did have a wallet or something, and after they killed her maybe they, you know, threw the, threw the wallet on further out here in this woods. But there was nothing. I pulled up the autopsy. They believed that she was a female, 20 to 25 years of age, height is 63, 65 inches, so five foot four, I believe.
They estimated that she'd been there anywhere from a year to may, possibly up to a year and a half. When this first started, we really thought, ahh it won't be that hard. We'll find a missing person's report thinking that we might identify her and we never have. NARRATOR: After nearly 40 years on the case, David's retirement is fast approaching. DAVID: Time's running out for me. Before I retire, before I die, I want to identify this girl. I'm organizing a email to the DNA Doe project.
NARRATOR: The DNA Doe Project is a groundbreaking organization that brings together some of the best genetic detectives in the world. To help crack cold cases. RHONDA: Oh. These are tough to look at. I can't imagine what this young woman must have gone through. She didn't deserve this. The mission of the DNA Doe project is to return unidentified human remains back to their families. So they're not sitting in a box on a shelf somewhere, they are getting a proper burial.
NARRATOR: The project's volunteers upload each Doe's DNA to public databases to try to find genetic relatives, who they hope can lead them to the identity of the body. And now, they're focusing on Tyler Jane Doe. RHONDA: We've asked David to send samples of Tyler Jane Doe's remains to the lab so they can extract DNA. DR KINCAID: David sent hair, a foot bone, as well as a bone from the spine, a vertebra. But it turns out only 20% of the DNA was human, so that wasn't going to work for us.
NARRATOR: Because the samples were exposed to the elements for over a year, the DNA is either too contaminated or too damaged. DR KINCAID: Even by our standards Tyler Jane Doe is a really difficult case. We need more DNA. NARRATOR: There is one last technique the lab can try, described as 'a brute force approach.' DR KINCAID: We have to cobble together the DNA we got from the foot bone and the DNA that we got from the hair. NARRATOR: It's time-consuming and there's no guarantee it'll work but without enough DNA, the case is unlikely to ever be solved.
DR KINCAID: If we combine these attempts, maybe we can just get enough DNA to make a profile. So let's go for it. DAVID: Even though the DNA DOE Project has the case now, we still have a homicide we need to solve. This was a reconstruction one of the doctors did 38 years ago. Back then they come out looking like cave people you know.
NARRATOR: One of the DNA Doe project volunteers has updated the facial reconstruction, mapping the shape of the skull with photos of real people. DAVID: This reconstruction picture's a whole lot better it's more lifelike, and, uh, someone may recognize her. NARRATOR: David plans to revisit old leads with the new facial reconstruction. First up, the country music bar that was named on the t-shirt found with the doe.
DAVID: The Top Rail has always been the best lead and I'm headed to meet a lady that worked at the Top Rail during the time period I believe that my victim disappeared. She might recognize her. Hello Debra. Back in 1985, I found the skeletal remains of a young girl. She had a T-shirt on it said Top Rail Country Music, Dallas, Texas. DEBRA: Right. DAVID: So this is a facial reconstruction of her. DEBRA: Mm-Hmm. DAVID: That we had done. DEBRA: Oh my. She does not look familiar at all to me. But I do recognize the shirt.
DAVID: Tell me about the Top Rail. What was it like? DEBRA: It was pretty rough. Real rough back then. Lots of fights, shootings, and it was crowded. Oh man it was, it was packed. It was a crazy place, it really was. DAVID: I bet you it was. DEBRA: Yeah it was. ARCHIVE: Yeee ha! NARRATOR: For a young woman like Tyler Jane Doe, the early 80s would have been a heady time to be in Dallas. As the city rode high on an oil boom, a wild party scene emerged.
Exciting and seductive, it could also be dangerous. DEBRA: You kind of felt safe, but if you went very far from the Top Rail, you didn't feel safe. NARRATOR: The Top Rail was close to one of Dallas's roughest neighborhoods, the Harry Hines Boulevard. An area notorious for sex workers, drug dealers and violence. POLICEMAN: I was hoping we'd be able to get through at least this calendar year without another tragic situation. But again, you know, there's a lot of murderers out there.
NARRATOR: Harry Hines is just a few interchanges away from the I-20. The highway where Tyler Jane Doe's body was dumped. DEBRA: I just can't even imagine if it were my daughter or, you know. DAVID: Yeah. Right. You're exactly right. Yeah. DEBRA: Ugh, it's awful. DAVID: I was kind of hoping that she'd look at her and say, oh, I know that girl. Yeah, she used to come in here all the time. But she didn't. At the time that we found this girl I had a five-year-old daughter now she's 43.
This poor little girl never made that. They finally got it! NARRATOR: The 'brute force' approach worked. The lab has successfully extracted Tyler Jane Doe's DNA. Now we can try and start to figure out who she is. NARRATOR: The next stage of the investigation uses online databases to try and find genetic relatives of the doe.
These databases contain the DNA profiles of millions of people. And when the team upload the Doe's DNA it is automatically compared to every one of them. If any share DNA it's called a 'match.' Now I can start the upload. Here we go! NARRATOR: A match could share as much as 50% of their DNA, which would make them a parent, sibling or child of the doe. RHONDA: Most matches share 2 percent or less, which can make it take years to solve. I'm a little nervous. This is a crucial point in the investigation.
Very soon we're gonna find out what we're dealing with. All right, let's see what we have. So our closest match shares 10 percent DNA with our doe. It could be a first cousin. This is better than I hoped for. Normally we all work from home but since David is retiring soon, we're gonna meet up with the team that's going to work on this case and I'm really excited. Hi. NARRATOR: Rhonda's bringing together 17 of the DNA Doe Project's most experienced volunteers to try to discover the identity of Tyler Jane Doe in the next 48 hours.
RHONDA: We want to do as much as we can in the weekend but still get everyone back to their day jobs. It gets very exciting when we get close. WOMAN: So I quit. RHONDA: Nobody can sleep. We just keep going until we find it. We are looking for a female, born 1959 to 1967. She was about five four, a hundred twenty seven pounds. We know from her DNA that her ethnicity is mostly Hispanic.
Now let's talk about the match list. So our match sharing the most amount of DNA with Jane is most likely first cousins. DDP VOLUNTEER: Oh. Fantastic. Oh my god. RHONDA: So let's work this top match together. Rebecca would you start building her tree? REBECCA: Okay. NARRATOR: If the Top Match is the first cousin of Tyler Jane Doe they should share grandparents. So the team must search birth, death and census records to build a family tree back two generations from the match
to their grandparents and then down, to figure out which route leads to Tyler Jane Doe. They start by looking for the top match's parents. JEANNA: Is this her mother? DDP VOLUNTEER: Yeah. REBECCA: She was born October 1936 according to the public record. Okay and there is an obituary under Rudolfo, born Fort Worth. This is it so we have her grandparents Rudolfo and his wife Juanita. RHONDA: Oh nice. Okay. NARRATOR: The top match's paternal grandparents appear to have Hispanic heritage like Tyler Jane Doe.
RHONDA: How many children did they have? REBECCA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. RHONDA: One is the father of the top match, so we're looking for a child of one of these five people. It's super exciting because that is so close. NARRATOR: As the team work to identify the victim, David is concentrating on finding the killer.
There is another unsolved murder case that still haunts him. DAVID: These are the crime scene pictures of Belinda [beep]. NARRATOR: And he suspects they're linked. DAVID: Belinda was found in January of 1985, 2 miles from where our victim was found in October 1985. She had a black, uh, sweater and, uh, blue jeans on. So that there is the victim. The only difference is that Tyler Jane Doe was placed out there nude.
Belinda still had all her clothes on. Both bodies were found on the side of the road. At the intersection right back there is where our victim was found and right up here is where Belinda was found. Belinda was a sex worker. She worked the Smith County area and she'd get on the CB and talk to the truck drivers. You know "You want to have a good time come in" and they'd pull into the rest area and she'd get in the truck.
NEWSREADER: Truckers call them commercial company, selling sex in moving motels. DAVID: Getting in a truck with someone, you're at their mercy. The small lady that both of these victims were, they could be overpowered very easily. Knowing that Belinda was a sex worker I was kind of thinking that Tyler Jane Doe might also be doing the same thing. NARRATOR: With so many similarities in the two cases, David is concerned they may even have died at the hands of the same killer.
DAVID: There's been many serial killer truck drivers that have killed girls across the US. If we could solve the Tyler Jane Doe case, it might lead to a serial killer that was traveling up and down the interstate. RHONDA: Five sisters, okay. CHELSEA: They're all here except for one brother. One. NARRATOR: The team has spent nearly 3 hours trawling through public records for any information about five of the children of Rudolfo and Juanita to see
if any of them could be the doe's parent. MARGARET: It's like pulling a thread on a sweater. To unravel the whole sweater we need to have that little start of a thread. NARRATOR: They're trying to eliminate them, and their children, one by one. Some have no daughters. Others have no children the right age. But that leaves two, who each have a daughter that could be Tyler Jane Doe. RHONDA: What did you find? EMILY: They had a granddaughter named Sindy. DAPHNE: What's her name? REBECCA: Sindy with an S.
S-I-N-D-Y. RHONDA: Okay. Okay, and her date of birth is 1957. So she's very close to the range. RACHEL: One of the things that really caused us to take notice was the multiple marriages year after year after year, which indicates great instability. Sindy got married very young. She gets married several times and then she has a last marriage to this gentleman Crow. January 26th, 1984. RHONDA: Okay so let's do proof of life and see what we can find. NARRATOR: Sindy married 5 times by the age of 27 and her last marriage was in 1984, the year that Tyler Jane Doe is believed to have been murdered.
Any evidence that Sindy was alive after that would rule her out. REBECCA: So far we cannot find proof of life past 1984. KEVIN: I'm gonna search in one of my PI Databases and see if I can find anything more. NARRATOR: Kevin is the only member of the team to hold a Private Investigator's license.
KEVIN: So I found an arrest record. RHONDA: Oh, from when? KEVIN: For, for Sindy in 1981. We can see that Sindy was arrested for larceny, theft by check. RHONDA: Okay. KEVIN: It's $200 to $10,000 check. But one thing that's interesting is it shows she was five four, a hundred ten pounds, hazel eyes, black hair, born in Texas, and she had a safe deposit box that apparently she didn't pay for and so the contents of the safe deposit box are her unclaimed property. RHONDA: She had abandoned property in the amount of $131. So it seems like somebody that was desperate enough to steal money would not leave money behind.
KEVIN: Yeah, probably not. NARRATOR: Unclaimed money is a strong indicator that Sindy was no longer around, but whether that's because she was murdered, or left in a hurry, is hard to tell. KEVIN: I haven't been able to find anything after that. Yet! RHONDA: Well, the lack of evidence is certainly exciting. KEVIN: Yeah. REBECCA: Right, that's what I just found. MARGARET: This is a picture that Rebecca found of Sindy. Wow! It's her high school photo, do you know what year?
REBECCA: She was age 16, so 1972. MARGARET: Okay, RHONDA: Oh wow. MARGARET: So we're now gonna compare it to the image that we have here. There it is. Oh, oh, look at that. RHONDA: Oh wow. REBECCA: Unbelievable. Look at that. Talk about chills. RHONDA: I know I have chills. Woo. Wow.
DAVID: It's David. RHONDA: Hi David, this is Rhonda from the DNA Doe Project. I have some news. We've been doing some research, and we have a familial line of interest. So I was wondering if you'd be able to come down so we can show you a few things. DAVID: That's exciting. I'm just so glad this is moving forward as quickly as it's moving. Thank you very much. NARRATOR: Rhonda is confident they've identified the doe, so she's asked David to join them for an official hand-over. RHONDA: We want names and current info. Current address, current phone number for her parents. Any other evidence that we need to present?
BRYAN: So, we have this husband, Larry. We were taking a look and found an interesting series of articles, and I think this husband of hers was a convicted murderer. Haa! Oh! DAPHNE: Killing five people in 19, BRYAN: 82. DAPHNE: 82. RHONDA: Oh. BRYAN: Including a 11-year-old child. DAPHNE: It was a very brutal murder. BRYAN: And he was executed in 2000. NEWSREADER: Texas seems determined to get even with Larry Robison even though he's clearly insane.
He has been sentenced to death for murdering his lover and 4 neighbors, two of them children. LARRY: I remember making the decision that I had to kill everybody in the whole world. I had this notion that if I killed everybody that, that no one would die, not really. RHONDA: Which husband was this? DAPHNE: The second. RHONDA: Two? BRYAN: This was the second husband. RHONDA: Okay. NARRATOR: Sindy married Robison in 1977, but divorced him in 1979, 3 years before he was arrested for these murders in 1982.
BRYAN: With our last record for our candidate being in 84, I'd imagine that there wouldn't be any culpability. VOLUNTEER: A very crazy coincidence. RHONDA: There's a possibility that he may have been let out for a time, but we're not certain when, so we need to have David Turner look into this. So not only are we going to present him with a possible candidate, we could be presenting him with a possible suspect.
DAVID: I don't want to get too excited about this, but this is the closest we've been in 38 years to identifying this girl. How are y'all? RHONDA: Hi, there, so good to meet you. DAVID: Nice to meet. We, we hug. RHONDA: Can I give you a hug? DAVID: We hug in Texas. RHONDA: Have a seat please. DAVID: Thank you ma'am. RHONDA: Alright, I have some documents that I wanna share with you. This female right here was of great interest to us.
Sindy Gina born in 1957. So that's right about the range that we were looking for. She has a criminal record, charges of larceny. But what I really want you to look at here is look at her estimated height. DAVID: Yeah. Five four. RHONDA: Five four. And that's exactly the height estimated for our doe. Her weight was 110 pounds. Very close. DAVID: Very close, yes. RHONDA: Very close. DAVID: And she's from Fort Worth. RHONDA: Yes. Now, I'd like to talk about the spouses of Sindy.
Sindy was married five times. DAVID: Phew! RHONDA: Husband number two is of particular interest. He was put to death by lethal injection in the year 2000, but they were trying to overturn that due to an insanity plea. So he may have been released at some point. DAVID: If they file an insanity plea, they don't get released. RHONDA: Okay. So that would rule him out then? DAVID: Yes. RHONDA: We found no activity for Sindy beyond the marriage to husband number five in 1984 that's where everything stops.
Would you like to see a picture? DAVID: Yes. Wow. Pretty close, isn't it? RHONDA: We thought so too. DAVID: To actually put a, a, a, a beautiful face with, with what only thing I've ever had to look at, you know, through, for the last 38 years is really amazing. Yeah I've thought of a, of a hundred things on the way down here, what y'all were gonna tell me. But this is good, this is great. And just, you just don't know how much I appreciate y'all. And I'm going to get the poor little girl out of
our evidence room you know. RHONDA: Oh that's. DAVID: You know and, and I don't know if, if, uh, if y'all have been told, but, uh, I was planning on giving her a burial. So I have, uh, or my family, we have five plots at the cemetery. So I was gonna donate one of those plots. She deserves to have a decent funeral. When, when I found out that we were as close as we were on this, I said, let's hold off. I didn't want to bury her and then like we found her family, and then her family wants her back up there you know.
Hello everyone. ALL: Hi. DAVID: I'm so glad to meet y'all. And thank you all for all y'all's hard work, appreciate you all. DDP VOLUNTEER: And yours. Yeah. DAVID: 38 years I've been working on this. Trust me, it was worth the, the drive down here to, to get this information and to meet y'all. Again, I appreciate every one of y'all. DDP VOLUNTEER: Thank you very much. DAVID: I need to give y'all an applause.
I'm excited to, uh, make this first phone call to see we can give our unidentified girl a name. I'm gonna call the mother. TELEPHONE VOICE: Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. DAVID: My name's David Turner, I'm a detective with the Sheriff's Department in Tyler. Uh, if you could call me back, I will probably be here for about an hour. Thank you.
That's the mother. Miss [beep]. MOTHER: Hello. DAVID: My name's David Turner, I'm a detective with the Sheriff's Office in Tyler. I always hate to talk to people over the phone about things like this but I'm trying to locate someone that might be a relative to a Sindy, is there a possibility you know who that is? MOTHER: Well, I'm her mother. DAVID: Okay. Do you know where she's at, or have you talked to her lately? MOTHER: I haven't spoken to her in close to 30 years.
DAVID: We have a, a young girl that we found quite a number of years ago, that we've been trying to identify. Would it be all right if I traveled up to Fort Worth tomorrow and meet with you and sit down and show you everything I have and, this might possibility be your daughter? MOTHER: Oh! Oh that would be fine, that would be fine. DAVID: Okay. Yes ma'am. MOTHER: Thank you so much, I'll see you tomorrow. DAVID: Okay. Bye. MOTHER: Bye. DAVID: This pretty well looks like, the DDP was right on the button. According to her, hadn't spoke to her daughter in, in uh many, many years, so pretty sure this is gonna be her daughter.
MICHELLE: My cousin was Gina's last husband, and his name was Phillip Crow. They came to my house from the airport, from flying in from Texas. They were going to start building a brand new family and a new path, a new adventure in Alabama. I was about 16 at the time. Gina was one of the very first people that I'd ever seen from somewhere other than Alabama. She just looked so different, like she stepped right out of a magazine.
She came across as very friendly and had a wonderful laugh. She was so young and she'd just had a baby. Margo was about 6 weeks old maybe two months. When Gina went back out to Texas to pack their house and it seemed like this vibrant, beautiful life, walked into the airport, and then she was just swallowed up by the world, never to be seen again. I believe that when she got on the airplane to go out to Texas, she had every intention of coming back here. MARGO: I never seen my mama. Never knew what she looked like. Sometimes I would have fantasies that she would come back.
I thought well if she ain't come looking for me this long maybe she really don't want me. NARRATOR: David and Rhonda are on their way to meet Margo and Michelle to find out more about Gina's disappearance. DAVID: I'm gonna try to recover any other evidence that we may not know. Michelle remembers when Margo and, and Gina and Philip arrived there. RHONDA: So she could have been one of the last people to see Gina?
DAVID: Hello. MARGO: Come in. DAVID: I'm David Turner. Nice to meet you. Sit down. MICHELLE: Hi. DAVID: The last thing that we know about Gina is she was visiting y'all and y'all took her to the airport to fly home. MICHELLE: Uh huh and Gina flew back to Dallas to pack up the house and then Phillip was to drive out there and bring everything back.
DAVID: Did she say, about how long you think it would be before she'd get the house packed up to come back to Alabama? MICHELLE: About a week or two. DAVID: So Phillip did leave though and. MICHELLE: To go out there yes. DAVID: And then he shows back up a week later. MICHELLE: With everything but without her. Yeah. DAVID: And how'd that conversation go? MICHELLE: Well, I mean it just, she went missing. She wasn't at the house. DAVID: What did Phil ever tell you about your mother?
MARGO: He wouldn't really tell me much. He would just tell me that she abandoned me. MICHELLE: He would not talk about her mother at all. I think a lot of people in the family really wanted to ask him, but everyone was afraid to do so. He was known for having a temper, drinking and nobody wanted to set him off. MARGO: I was brought up by my dad, Phillip Crow when he remarried to my stepmomma. He stayed drunk all the time. He really didn't really pay me no attention.
I just did stuff on my own. When I asked about my mother Gina, he would just tell me that she abandoned me. I think he really wasn't telling me the truth 'cause he really didn't want me to know. DAVID: Nobody reported her missing. You know, if I came to pick my wife up and she wasn't there, I'd, first thing I'd do is call the police. MICHELLE: That's what I would do. MARGO: Now that I'm talking to David I think she was murdered, it might have been my daddy.
MICHELLE: You think your cousin wouldn't do that but it is one of the options. Philip passed away a few years ago. Margo found him laying on the floor in his house. He had a heart attack, I believe. I really wish that Philip had been alive so that he could be questioned. Because she didn't deserve to die the way she did. Taking someone that small and dainty and beautiful, far off the side of the road and just leaving them there, like she meant nothing.
MARGO: It still hurts but at least now I know that she didn't just abandon me. RHONDA: No. MICHELLE: No. Absolutely not. DAVID: No. MARGO: I love my children. I tell 'em all the time, I never had my mama, and I want y'all to know that I'm trying and I'm here for y'all. RHONDA: I'm so sorry you missed out on that Margo.
MICHELLE: I'm sorry. MARGO: It's okay. I'll be okay. DAVID: Well, I got something for you. The only thing we found besides her clothes was her watch and a butterfly earring. So we want you to have that. MARGO: I appreciate it. DAVID: Yes ma'am. MARGO: Thank you. And I appreciate y'all for not giving up. DAVID: Well, thank you. My theory all along was she got into a big truck and the truck driver killed her. Everything changed in Alabama. Now I'm thinking, the husband did it. But if Philip did kill her, I don't think we would've ever
obtained enough of evidence, unless he actually told us 'I did it'. Somebody got away with murder. But at least her family know what happened to her. MICHELLE: If David had not spent all of his career looking for answers for his Jane Doe, Margo would have never have Gina back. That is her closure. You know 40 years that's a heavy weight for her to carry, she doesn't have to carry it anymore.
