Overview
- A farmer found the woman's body inside a small cardboard box near Otterbein, Indiana, on Oct. 8, 1976, and investigators at the time determined she had been shot in the back of the head.
- Coroners exhumed the remains in 2019 but lab teams reported the DNA was highly degraded and yielded only a limited profile.
- The Benton County Coroner's Office asked the nonprofit DNA Doe Project for help in 2021 and genealogists made a research breakthrough in 2024 that advanced the case.
- DNA Doe Project announced in July 2026 that the Jane Doe is Jane Hart, born in 1906, last known to live in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, with relatives' DNA uploaded to public databases providing confirmation.
- The homicide remains unsolved, and investigators and genealogists say the case shows how genetic genealogy can name long-unidentified victims but depends on broader public representation in databases to trace suspects and family links.