A woman killed during a domestic violence incident on Eppirt Street in East Orange on September 14, 1984 has never been identified, and New Jersey State Police say they are now turning to advanced DNA science to finally learn her name. She was known only by the nicknames “L.A.” or Loranda, and for more than four decades her true identity has remained a mystery to investigators.
According to NJ.com, state police did not say whether anyone was ever prosecuted in connection with her killing, and officials have not disclosed her approximate age at the time of her death. Investigators have exhumed the victim's remains to develop new DNA evidence, and the effort is being supported by a federal grant. That funding mirrors a broader pattern of Department of Justice grant programs, including the Cold Case Missing and Unidentified Persons initiative, that increasingly cover exhumation costs and advanced single-nucleotide polymorphism DNA testing that local municipal budgets typically cannot afford, according to prior Hoodline reporting.
A Young Woman Known Only By a Nickname
Case files documented by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children indicate the victim was estimated to be between 15 and 20 years old and stood between 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-9 inches tall. She had distinctive physical markers, including a half-inch scar beneath her left eye, a three-inch scar on her neck, and horizontal scars on her forearms.
Forensic case records reviewed by the Unidentified Wiki show the victim wore four specific rings on her left hand — a silver ring featuring the letter Y, a gold ring set with 21 white stones, a plain gold band, and a black rubber ring. Unconfirmed reports cited by the same source indicated she had lived in East Orange for only three to four months before her death, going by the nickname “L.A.,” and authorities believe she may have used aliases including Laronda or Laranda paired with surnames like Anderson.
State police released forensic facial reconstruction photos of the victim, which were created by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Officials did not explain why the child protection organization is involved in the investigation, though the organization, established by Congress in 1984, maintains specialized forensic case managers who partner with law enforcement on unidentified remains cases involving victims estimated to have been minors or young adults under 21, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Genetic Genealogy Takes On a Cold Case
Investigators are now utilizing genetic genealogy in an effort to trace the victim's biological relatives, partnering with the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The center, which launched in December 2022, was the nation's first academic program of its kind, offering pro bono forensic genealogy casework and training to help underfunded law enforcement agencies resolve cold cases, according to Forensic Magazine.
From its founding through May 2026, the Ramapo center has resolved 43 cold cases involving violent crimes, unidentified human remains, and wrongful convictions, per NJ Spotlight News. The approach has already paid off once in New Jersey: in March 2025, the center partnered with the New Jersey State Police Cold Case Unit to identify human remains found on the Delaware River in 2017 as a woman who had disappeared in 2014, according to ISHI News.
Why Traditional Databases Keep Coming Up Short
The shift toward genetic genealogy reflects the limits of older tools. Academic research published in late 2025 found that traditional federal databases like CODIS yield identifications in only 13% to 16% of unidentified remains cases, compared to a roughly 50% resolution rate for forensic genetic genealogy in NamUs cases, Hoodline previously reported. CODIS can only match against known offenders or reported missing persons, while genetic genealogy builds out multi-generational family trees from consumer DNA databases.
New Jersey has a particularly deep backlog of these cases. The federal National Missing and Unidentified Persons System provides information on unidentified human remains cases in New Jersey, according to the National Institute of Justice. The federal NamUs database is intended to enable cross-jurisdictional matching of missing persons and unidentified remains records, per the DNA Doe Project.
How to Help Identify Her
State police are asking anyone with information to contact the agency's missing persons unit by phone at 609-882-2000, extension 2554, or by email at [email protected]. More than four decades after she was killed on Eppirt Street, investigators say the combination of exhumed DNA, facial reconstruction, and genetic genealogy may finally offer a path to answering the one question that has defined this case from the start: who was she?
