A woman who vanished from Conyers nearly three decades ago finally has a name attached to the bones found not far from where she was last seen. Tammy Fortson was reported missing from the Fox Chase Court area in 1997, and skeletal remains discovered in 2016 near Christian Circle have now been positively identified as hers.
According to the Fox 5 Atlanta report, the Conyers Police Department made the identification per a news release, confirming that the remains found near Christian Circle in 2016 belonged to Fortson. Christian Circle was believed to be one of the last known locations where Fortson was seen, according to 11Alive. Fortson disappeared from Conyers on October 2, 1997, according to the Charley Project, a nonprofit database that tracks missing-persons cases.
Years of Testing Finally Yield a Match
The path to identification stretched across years and multiple rounds of forensic work. Portions of the remains were sent for advanced DNA testing in 2019, submitted to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, as detailed by WSB-TV. In 2024, the case was reassigned to Lieutenant Hinds, who renewed investigative efforts and coordinated additional forensic testing, per the same account.
That renewed push produced the breakthrough. DNA analysis determined the remains were approximately 104 million times more likely to be the biological child of Fortson's mother than an unrelated person, per 11Alive's reporting. WSB-TV's account of the same analysis described the comparison as being to the biological child of a woman identified as Ms. Beckhold, rather than Fortson's mother — the two outlets differ on that detail. The medical examiner made a positive identification of the remains as Fortson's in July 2026.
What Investigators Still Don't Know
Despite the identification, investigators have not released the exact cause or circumstances of Fortson's death. The death investigation is active and ongoing, and detectives are seeking leads to determine how Fortson died and who may be responsible, according to Fox 5 Atlanta's reporting on the Conyers Police Department release.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Newton County Sheriff's Office at 470-426-4294, per the article. The case echoes other Georgia cold cases cracked by modern DNA techniques, including a 1988 Jenkins County case in which the Georgia Bureau of Investigation used genealogy technology to identify remains found in a dumpster. For Fortson's family, the identification closes one painful chapter of uncertainty even as the question of what happened to her in 1997 remains unanswered.
