For more than three decades, she was known only as a Jane Doe found shot to death in the desert outside Lake Havasu City. Now the Mohave County Sheriff's Office says that woman has a name: Jean Andrae Brady, who was 48 years old when her body was discovered on June 25, 1995, in Standard Wash, killed by multiple gunshot wounds.
Investigators say they identified Brady as the true identity of the Jane Doe found in Standard Wash, an off-highway vehicle and dispersed camping area managed by the Bureau of Land Management off State Route 95 southeast of Lake Havasu City, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The identification, detailed in a statement released by the Mohave County Sheriff's Office and reported by FOX 10 Phoenix, marks a breakthrough in a case that sat unsolved for more than 30 years. No suspect has been identified in Brady's murder, and detectives are now asking the public for help on two fronts: finding whoever killed her, and locating relatives who never knew what happened to her.
A Victim With No Immediate Family Left to Ask
Part of what has made Brady's case so difficult, according to background compiled by The Buzz, is that she had no known children or siblings — leaving investigators without the usual first calls to make when a homicide victim is identified. Her ex-husband, who was interviewed by detectives during the original 1995 investigation, died just a year after her murder, in 1996, closing off another avenue that might have produced fresh information decades later.
Brady's parents were gone long before she was killed. Her father, Robert Curtis Patterson, was born August 9, 1913, and died May 5, 1969; her mother, Doris Jean Massman, was born July 29, 1914, and died April 18, 1979. The Mohave County Sheriff's Office has said Brady's relatives may be residing in Missouri and/or Kansas, per its statement, and investigators are specifically appealing to extended family members who might still be out there.
Property in Storage Since the Investigation Began
Detectives served a search warrant on a storage unit rented by Brady during the original probe and recovered multiple boxes of her personal property, but that property was ultimately determined not to be relevant to the murder investigation, according to details compiled by The Buzz. The boxes have remained in storage ever since, and the sheriff's office is now seeking extended family members who could legally claim Brady's belongings — a search that runs parallel to, but separate from, the hunt for her killer.
Investigators have also asked anyone who knew Brady, or who knew her Lake Havasu City associates back in 1995, to come forward with information, along with anyone who might know who had cause to harm her. Detectives previously conducted interviews as part of the case, including with Brady's ex-husband, but the passage of time and the loss of that witness have left the file dependent largely on the public's memory of the mid-1990s Lake Havasu community.
Part of a Growing Cold Case Push in Mohave County
Brady's case is one of more than 80 unsolved murder and missing persons cold cases that have piled up across Mohave County over more than three decades, a backlog tied to the region's vast, remote desert terrain that has long served as a body disposal site, according to ABC15 Arizona. The Mohave County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit has built a track record of cracking these cases using forensic genealogy — in 2023, the unit partnered with DNA laboratory Othram to identify a 1982 desert murder victim as Virgil Renner of California after 41 years, per Othram. That same year, the unit used advanced genetic genealogy to identify a 1971 Jane Doe found near Kingman as Colleen Audrey Rice, whose body had gone unidentified for over 50 years.
The unit is also actively chasing renewed DNA leads in the October 2000 “Sleeping Bag Man” case near Lake Havasu, a homicide Hoodline previously reported in which the victim was found stuffed inside a sleeping bag. It's a similar playbook to the unit's public appeal for tips in the 1979 Hoover Dam cold case murder of heiress Marion Berry, another decades-old file the same detectives have pushed back into the spotlight.
How to Submit a Tip
Anyone with information about Brady's murder, her whereabouts and associates in 1995, or possible surviving relatives is asked to contact the Mohave County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit at 928-753-0753, extension 4408. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through Mohave Silent Witness, and the sheriff's office maintains a dedicated toll-free tip line at 1-800-522-4312 with the same extension for callers reporting on cold case homicides.
