More than half a century after 12-year-old Nora Kathylene "Kathy" Jones was murdered, Metro Nashville detectives have taken the extraordinary step of exhuming her body as part of a renewed push to crack one of the city’s most haunting cold cases.
Detectives oversaw the exhumation on Wednesday, clearing the way for the Office of the Medical Examiner to run new forensic tests that did not exist when Kathy was killed in late 1969.
According to the Metro Nashville Police Department’s cold-case file, Kathy left her home on the 300 block of Lutie Street on Nov. 29, 1969, to walk to the Roller Drome skating rink and never made it back. Her body was found on Dec. 2, 1969, in tall grass behind a Krispy Kreme in the 2800 block of Grandview Avenue. The file states that she had been raped, stabbed and suffocated after a sock was used as a gag, per Nashville Cold Case.
Members of the MNPD cold-case unit were present for the exhumation, and the medical examiner will now conduct a forensic review using modern techniques, investigators told WKRN News 2. Retired detective Mickey Miller told the station that "no autopsy was ever done on Kathy," a gap that investigators hope this fresh review can finally close.
Why Investigators Are Turning Back the Clock
Across the country, police and forensic teams have been leaning heavily on DNA analysis and genetic genealogy to breathe new life into long-stalled investigations. Those tools have led to suspect identifications years, sometimes decades, after crimes were committed.
In Nashville, MNPD has already used modern DNA testing to identify a suspect in a 1998 murder, as reported by WSMV4. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has also turned to exhumations in older homicide cases so that new autopsies and testing can be performed, according to Action News 5.
Investigators say the hope is that Kathy’s remains, examined with today’s technology, could yield DNA or other forensic clues that were impossible to detect in 1969. Any new evidence could then be checked against current databases and weighed alongside witness statements and case files that have been preserved for decades.
How the Public Can Help
Police are again asking the public to come forward with anything that might help. Anyone with information about the case is asked to email [email protected] or call Crime Stoppers at 615-742-7463, according to Nashville Cold Case. Detectives say even a small detail or a long-ago memory could matter as evidence is reexamined with today’s tools and methods.
Family members and longtime local residents have kept Kathy’s memory alive for more than fifty years, and investigators say they hope this new forensic review will finally bring them closer to the truth. MNPD has not announced any arrests. Detectives describe the exhumation as a critical step in trying to generate testable evidence and narrow the field of suspects in a murder that has haunted Nashville for generations.
