Human remains found stuffed inside a garment bag in a remote corner of Nevada have been identified almost 45 years later, state police said.
On Oct. 26, 1978, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office responded to a quiet part of Imlay, a small town located about two hours north of Reno, where they discovered a garment bag with both decayed remains and articles of women’s clothing inside. While an autopsy revealed the victim to be a white woman around 40 or older, investigators struggled to identify her.
For years, authorities combed through evidence and probed leads, but the case went cold. It was eventually entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, alongside a rendering of what detectives thought the woman looked like at the time of her death. According to the entry, she was believed to be 5-foot-5 with red or auburn hair.
Investigators finally got a break in the case last March, when they teamed up with Othram Inc., a private laboratory specializing in forensic genealogy analysis. On Wednesday, Nevada State Police announced the partnership paid off and that, thanks to advancements in DNA analysis, they’d finally identified their Jane Doe.
She was Florence Charleston, a woman in her late 60s who had moved from Ohio to Portland, Oregon shortly before her death. Police said the shallow grave where she was found was 535 miles miles away from her new home.
In a separate news release, Othram said they used DNA taken from the remains “to develop a comprehensive DNA profile for the unidentified woman,” leading investigators to two of Charleston’s nieces, both living in Ohio.
Mystery still surrounds how exactly Charleston died and wound up buried so far from home. An investigation into the matter is ongoing.