In January 2023, investigators in Opelika, Alabama, finally put a name to the remains of a child discovered more than a decade earlier. The case had been known simply as “Opelika Jane Doe. ” A local resident found a human skull near the Brook Haven trailer complex on January 28, 2012, and police soon recovered more scattered remains. A pink, long-sleeved shirt with heart-shaped buttons lay near a creek bank, though investigators could not determine if it belonged to the victim.
Forensic experts concluded the skull belonged to a young African American girl between four and seven years old. A deformity in her left eye suggested possible abuse, and her bones showed signs of malnutrition and neglect. Despite reviewing school and birth records, detectives could not identify her. In 2016, a Sunday school teacher at Greater Peace Church, located roughly ten minutes from where the remains were found, came forward with photographs of a young girl who closely resembled the Jane Doe.
The teacher said the photos were taken in the summer of 2011 and described the girl as disheveled, uninterested in personal hygiene, and withdrawn from other children. She was around four or five years old at the time. The teacher could not remember her name, and the church had no records of the child. Police used advanced imaging software to enhance the old photographs, hoping the public could help identify her.
In 2017, isotope testing by experts from the University of South Florida suggested she had likely lived in the southeastern United States. In January 2022, the Opelika Police Department enlisted the help of Othram, a forensic laboratory specializing in advanced DNA sequencing. DNA was successfully extracted from the remains, producing a more comprehensive genetic profile. Investigators also sought help from Barbara Rae-Venter, the geneticist known for assisting in cases such as the Golden State Killer investigation.
In January 2023, Othram identified the child as Amour Jua Wiggin. Her father was Lamar Vickersaff, a 50-year-old Opelika resident serving in the United States Navy. Detectives traveled to Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida, where Lamar was stationed, and confronted him about his daughter’s death. He refused to cooperate.
His wife, Ruth, whom he married in May 2006, told investigators she had no idea who the child was or who her biological mother might be. Amour’s biological mother was later identified as Sherry Wiggin of Maryland. She met Lamar when she was nineteen and he was thirty-five, both living in the same housing complex. When Sherry became pregnant, the couple decided to live together, but Lamar’s family reacted with anger because the child was born outside marriage, and the two separated.
At age thirty-seven, Sherry told investigators she was Amour’s biological mother. She confirmed that Lamar and Ruth had obtained full legal custody of Amour in 2009, that she had been paying child support since then, and that her visitation rights had been suspended at the time of Amour’s death. Lamar and Ruth were arrested in Jacksonville on January 17, 2023. Both faced charges of failing to report a missing child, and Lamar was also charged with murder.
Sherry spoke publicly about the case, saying that while some had been kind and understanding, many judged her without knowing what had really happened. What mattered most to her, she said, was justice for Amour. In May 2004, Diana Dennis Howland, a 35-year-old mother of four from Alton, Illinois, disappeared without a trace. Her life had been troubled by years of drug addiction, which made her lifestyle unstable.
One of her daughters sensed something was wrong when Diana failed to appear at a school play she had promised to attend. In June 2004, maintenance workers at a rest stop along Interstate 70 discovered a woman’s body on a grassy slope. Some parts were missing, and she wore only a black bra. A sharp blade was found in a nearby stream.
Investigators could not identify her, though they noted a cesarean scar. Witnesses reported seeing a white truck near the scene. With no leads, the case went cold. In 2016, advanced DNA testing identified the woman as Diana Howland.
The same technique later linked the knife left at the scene to a man named Mike Clardy. He was arrested in Maryland Heights, Missouri, where he lived with his wife. By then, Clardy had been blinded in a car accident. He confessed to killing Diana at his home and moving her body to where it was found, saying the motive was a dispute.
If convicted, he faced up to forty years in prison. On the morning of August 11, 2017, the bodies of Noelle Renee Trees and Brian Keith Lashley were found in their Fort Wayne, Indiana, home. Noelle was twenty-five and Brian twenty-nine. Blood was scattered throughout the house, and investigators determined a party had been held there earlier that night.
Police examined Noelle’s phone and found an unidentified fingerprint belonging to Dustin Neel, an old acquaintance of the couple. Neel said he had known Noelle for about twenty years, that he went straight to his mother’s house after the party, and that he knew the couple had three pounds of marijuana worth considerable money. With no evidence against him, he was released. Years passed.
In July 2022, a witness told police that Neel’s half-brother said Neel was responsible for the killings. The half-brother later confirmed hearing Neel boast about killing both victims. Another witness came forward in October 2022, claiming Neel admitted to killing Noelle and Brian and five other people. Phone records placed Neel at the crime scene between 6:20 and 7:04 a.
m. The truth emerged: Neel had entered the home through a window in a poorly planned attempt to steal the marijuana, believing no one was inside. Brian saw him, and Neel stabbed him, then killed Noelle. On January 1, 2023, police arrested Neel in Wells County.
He was extradited to Allen County to face murder charges, nearly six years after the crime. In 2008, skeletal remains of an unidentified female were found west of White Swan, Washington. Traditional DNA testing failed to produce a usable profile, and the case faded. In 2022, the Yakima County Coroner’s Office partnered with Othram.
Scientists extracted a usable sample, built a full DNA profile, and used forensic genetic genealogy to identify her as Daisy Mae Tolman, also known as Daisy Mae Heath, born January 10, 1958. She had been living with relatives on the Yakama Indian Reservation when she disappeared in late August 1987. Her family did not report her missing until late October because she was accustomed to being away for days or weeks at a time. She was twenty-nine when she died.
The exact circumstances of her death remain unknown. Wilomena Wilkins, an 81-year-old resident of East Greenbush, New York, was found dead in her apartment on August 19, 1994. She had been attacked two days earlier and died of a severe head injury. Her car had been stolen and returned the same day, and some of her belongings were later found near a cemetery ten miles away.
In 2019, a woman told police her boyfriend, Jeremiah James Jovitt, had confessed to assaulting an elderly woman during a robbery. Jovitt had been questioned at the time of the murder but was ruled out. Now forty-three, he worked as a bus driver for the elderly. When police approached him on October 1, 2019, he was defensive and refused to speak without a lawyer.
The following day he took his own life. His fingerprint matched one found on a corner of a coffee table at the crime scene. On January 19, 2023, police announced that Jovitt was responsible for Wilkins’s death. On October 27, 1997, police in Manistee County, Michigan, received a report of a woman’s body washed ashore near Fox Farm Road.
She was identified only by a single earring. The cause of death was drowning, considered accidental. In 2020, the cold case was reopened. In December 2022, advanced sequencing identified her as Dorothy Lynn Ricker, a 26-year-old Chicago woman.
She had last been seen on October 2, 1997, sitting on a beach near Lake Michigan. Her abandoned car was found shortly afterward. Whether her death was suicide or criminal action remains unknown. In 1973, the body of a man was found on the banks of the Saginaw River in Milwaukee, Michigan.
He had been shot and struck on the back of the head. Buried in an unmarked grave, the case went unsolved for nearly fifty years. In 2020, the Michigan State Police cold case team reopened it. With help from the DNA Doe Project and advanced genealogy, he was identified in January 2023 as Daniel G.
Garza Gonzales, a 28-year-old Vietnam War veteran who had left Fort Worth, Texas, for work in Flint, Michigan, and never arrived. His killer remains unidentified. In 1994, 89-year-old Lillian DeLoach, a former teacher and nurse with memory loss, was found murdered in her Broward County, Florida, home. Her niece June Nicholas cared for her.
The attack appeared to be a burglary gone wrong. In 2004, investigators found male DNA on Lillian’s nightgown. In 2019, the cold case was reopened, and a suspect emerged: Johnny M. Brown, a homeless former Marine who had lived down the street and died in 2010.
His remains were exhumed in August 2022, and DNA matched. “I know that wherever she is now, she can sleep in peace,” June Nicholas said. On July 24, 2000, a body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. Fingerprints and DNA produced no match.
In 2022, the FBI identified the man as Philip Kohn, an 84-year-old who had disappeared from Las Vegas in 2000. He had traveled to New York in July 2000. How he ended up off the coast of Maine remains a mystery. William and Anna Campbell, a couple in their eighties, were found murdered in their Clarksville, Tennessee, home on January 28, 2010, during a snowstorm.
A neighbor, Daniel Shampine, used a spare key to check on them after they failed to answer calls. Their beds showed they had been killed while sleeping. Nothing valuable was stolen, and the family dog had not barked, suggesting the killer was known to them. Their adopted son, William Roger Campbell, became a person of interest.
He was the heir to their estate, valued at roughly $250,000. He refused to cooperate and gave contradictory statements. The case went cold until his arrest in June 2021. At trial in January 2023, evidence revealed that Roger had visited Georgia shortly after the killings, where police found a sheet with suspicious red stains in his truck.
Blood was found in his pickup and in a bathroom drain. His former wife testified that he had appeared anxious days before the murder and mentioned he would be leaving town on January 28, the day of the killings. A clockmaker testified that Roger sold him a rare Lindridge pendulum clock worth thousands of dollars just days after his parents’ deaths, behaving with apparent indifference. Forensic experts placed the time of death around 6:20 a.
m. , before Roger claimed he left the house at 7:00 a. m. “They weren’t dying fast enough,” prosecutor Crystal Morgan said.
“That’s why he killed them. ” On January 23, 2023, William Roger Campbell, age sixty-six, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder.