A skeleton discovered along Highway 36 in rural Hamilton County more than four decades ago finally has a name. Investigators have identified the remains as Betty Jo Norris, who was 44 years old when she was shot once in the head and left along the roadside for several months before ranchers working cattle found her on Sept. 1, 1983.
Ranchers stumbled onto the skeleton that September morning, according to KWTX, which reported that investigators determined the victim had been left at the location for several months before discovery, having suffered a single gunshot wound to the head. Hamilton County sits west of Waco, and the case has lingered unsolved ever since. As FOX 7 Austin reports, Texas Rangers made several attempts over the years to identify Norris, relying on statewide announcements, forensic reconstruction images and whatever DNA testing was available at the time — all without success.
Alongside the skeleton, investigators recovered a set of personal items that painted a quiet, haunting picture of the woman she had been: a pair of brown knee-length boots, a blue-and-white polka-dot blouse, stretch blue jeans, a watch with a brown leather wristband, bobby pins, and two barrettes decorated with orange roses, per the same KWTX account.
A Degraded Sample Stalls the Case
The investigation got new life in January 2024, when Rangers began reprocessing the case evidence and submitted it to the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab in Waco for updated testing, the station's report notes. That work led to an extraction of an unknown male DNA sample from the victim's clothing in early 2025 — but the sample was too degraded to produce a usable profile, and the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification could not qualify it for a database search.
Rather than let the case stall again, DPS submitted Norris's remains for testing and comparison through its Sexual Assault Kit Initiative program, according to the same KWTX report. The Texas Department of Public Safety says Rangers are using SAKI funding to resume investigative efforts on cold cases by outsourcing forensic genetic genealogy testing tied to unknown offenders in sexual assaults and sexually related homicides.
Genealogy Breakthrough Points to Belton
Advanced DNA testing and genealogy research eventually led investigators to relatives of the unidentified victim living in Brazos and Bell counties. Those relatives directed investigators to a man living in Belton, whose mother had disappeared in the early 1980s, the station's report states. The son agreed to provide his own DNA sample for comparison.
On Aug. 20, 2026, that testing confirmed what investigators suspected: the unidentified woman was the man's mother, Betty Jo Norris, born Aug. 8, 1939. The identification closes a four-decade gap for a family that had been left wondering what happened to her, even as the larger question of who killed her remains unanswered.
Comparable breakthroughs elsewhere in Texas show how far cold-case DNA work has come. In North Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the Jack County Sheriff's Office and Texas Rangers identified the victim of a 1984 homicide as Roberta Mumma using similar DNA technology. In another case detailed by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Rangers pursued a decades-old killing after an unknown DNA profile was developed and entered into the Combined DNA Index System in 2010, eventually leading to an arrest.
Investigation Continues
Texas Rangers and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office are still actively investigating Norris's death, according to FOX 7 Austin, whose report cites a release from the Texas DPS. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Hamilton County Communications Office at (254) 386-3300.
