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Who Was Ellery Jane Doe? Police Seek Help in Baffling Murder Case
How did a well-dressed woman with European links end up dumped by the side of a New York highway?
Police in New York State have released new information and asked for the public’s help in finding the identity of a woman found murdered by a highway back in 1983.
The victim became known as the Ellery Jane Doe after the town she was found dumped outside and no clues have ever been discovered as to her true name or the circumstances that led to her death.
Instead, what remains is a baffling cache of evidence that the authorities hope might lead to someone recognising her face and cracking the case once and for all.
It was December 12th 1983 when a trucker came across a gruesome sight in a ditch just off Highway 17. A woman lay dead, having been beaten, sexually assaulted and shot once in the mouth, once in the back and twice in the chest.
Officers from the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office were quickly summoned to the scene and were surprised by what they found about the victim’s person. She had expensive gold dental work that was later traced back to Europe, and she didn’t wear the shabby clothes of a transient.
Indeed, she was wearing high-end clothing including a raincoat from Germany and a skirt, blouse and camisole from Italy, all of which must have been expensive.
It was hoped that the woman might be carrying paperwork that could identify her, but all she had in her pocket was a note on paper made for guests at the Blue Boy Motor Motel in British Columbia.
On it was written a series of numbers that the FBI believes might correspond to phone numbers for Canadian airlines or map location codes.
A post-mortem would also reveal that Ellory Jane Doe had given birth to a child at some point in the past roughly 15 years, and that she had a tracheotomy scar on her neck that was unusual for a woman thought to be in her thirties.
Although extensive research was carried out in a bid to find out who the woman was and therefore who might have killed her, no leads were forthcoming and the case slowly went cold.
