A woman's body was pulled from the water near the First Island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on May 30, 1976, wrapped inside two trash bags, and five decades later nobody has ever learned her name. Virginia Beach police are now asking the public to look at a new, computer-generated face built from the woman's own genetic material, hoping somebody out there recognizes her.
A Homicide With No Name Attached
According to 13News Now, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the woman's death a homicide, though the case has sat unresolved for 50 years. Virginia's cold case database, maintained by Virginia State Police, states that the body was discovered floating in the bay at approximately 7:10 a.m. that morning, inside two trash bags, though that account carries lower confidence than the department's own description of the discovery.
Investigators believe the woman was white, approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall, and weighed between 135 and 145 pounds, per the department's findings relayed by 13News Now. She had a 5-inch scar on the back of her right thigh, and anatomical evidence indicated she had given birth at least once. On her estimated age, the record is split: 13News Now reports investigators believe she was between 35 and 45 years old, while Virginia State Police's cold case page describes the Medical Examiner's estimate as 30 to 50 years old.
Building a Face From DNA
To try to crack the case, the Virginia Beach Police Department partnered with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based DNA technology company, to develop a composite image of the woman, 13News Now reports. Forensic artists working with Parabon used genetic material recovered from the case to predict her ancestry, eye and hair color, skin tone, and facial structure, then produced an image of what she may have looked like at age 25.
Parabon's own description of its Snapshot system explains the science behind that kind of composite: the tool is designed to accurately predict genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling and face shape from a DNA sample, according to Parabon NanoLabs. The company says the technology exists to generate leads in cases where there are no suspects or database hits — not to deliver a final answer on its own. Parabon has also stated that its phenotyping composites are intended for lead-generation purposes only, and that in every case, any identity must still be confirmed through traditional forensic DNA matching.
Virginia Beach police echoed that caution directly, telling 13News Now that the image is a scientific approximation based on genetic information and may not exactly reflect the woman's actual appearance. It is a tool to jog someone's memory, not a photograph.
Decades-Old Cases Still Get Solved
The hope that a composite or a DNA sample can still break a case open decades later is not far-fetched. Investigative genetic genealogy, which combines DNA analysis with paper-trail research, has been used over roughly the past decade to identify people who had gone nameless for years, as reported by CNN. The FBI eventually created its own investigative genetic genealogy team after determining the technique could solve more cases, since traditional tools like CODIS only compare a DNA sample against known offenders already in the system — a dead end when there is no match on file.
CNN's reporting points to cases that stretch back even further than Virginia Beach's. One woman, identified after nearly 26 years through genetic genealogy work, had disappeared in November 2000. In another case taken on by the DNA Doe Project, a woman whose body was found in the Mississippi River in 1975 was identified roughly 50 years after she vanished. Closer to home, Charles City County authorities identified human remains found along the James River back in 1979, after a DNA sample from the victim's full-blood sister was compared against skeletal remains held by Virginia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, confirming the remains as those of Nick Lopsis, according to the Virginia Sheriffs' Association.
Virginia Beach alone has eight open cases of unidentified people, with the oldest dating back to 1976 — the same year this woman was found, as The Virginian-Pilot has reported. Another of those cases involves a man's skeletal remains found near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront in 2015, whose identity investigators still didn't know more than a decade later, per the same report.
How To Help
Virginia Beach's cold case squad is asking anyone with information, or anyone who recognizes the woman in the composite image, to call 757-385-4241. Those who prefer to stay anonymous can reach Crime Solvers at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP. Fifty years on, investigators are still betting that someone, somewhere, remembers her face.
