St. Louis Jane Doe/Hope Pt. Two

February 28, 1983. St. Louis, Missouri. The body of an African-American girl is found in the basement of an abandoned apartment building. She is believed to be between eight-to-eleven years old and has her hands tied behind her back and it turns out she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death before she was beheaded. Since the victim’s head is never recovered and she cannot be identified, she becomes known as the “St. Louis Jane Doe”. Over the years, investigators explore a number of different leads, but they are unable to determine the girl’s identity or figure out who was responsible for killing her. On this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”, we explore one of the most horrific and tragic stories you’ll ever find about the murder of an unidentified decedent, who has also been known by such as names as “Little Jane Doe” and “Precious Hope”.If you have information about this case, please contact the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department at [phone].

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Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/54ufmo.html

https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe_(1983)

“Our Precious Hope: St. Louis’ Little Jane Doe Revisited” Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our series about the murder of an unidentified girl
known only as the Saint Louis Jane Doe. Robin, do
you want to catch everyone up on what we talked
about in our previous episode?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, if you haven't heard, Ashley has to miss these
series of episodes because she's busy, So I will be
sharing all the details about the case with Jules and
she will be giving off her reaction. The Saint Louis
Jane Doe is one of the more infamous unidentified decedents
who has yet to get their name back because of
the horrific nature of this crime. She was an African
American girl who was found inside an abandoned building in

(01:07):
Saint Louis in nineteen eighty three February of nineteen eighty three,
and what was particularly horrific about it is that she
had been beheaded and an extensive search failed to turn
up her head. So they've never been able to make
a composite sketch or a facial reconstruction to show what
she might have looked like. She even sexually abused. The
only thing that she was wearing was a yellow sweater,

(01:28):
and try as they might, they were unable to determine
her identity, but they suspected that she was not murdered
in that building and may have been from another location
outside Saint Louis before the killer beheaded her and disposed
of her body. At that location. She was buried under
the name Precious Hope, which is how we're going to
be referring to here. We looked at a number of
different leads. They looked at a child murderer named Vernon Brown,

(01:51):
who killed at least three people and was living in
Saint Louis around the time period that Hope was murdered,
but they never found any evidence to link him to
the crime. There was a frustrating incident where they enlisted
the help of a police psychic named Noreen Rainier, and
the police decided to mail her some of the key
pieces of evidence, like the sweater and the nylon rope
which was used to bind Hope, but after a year

(02:14):
sent it back, it somehow went missing, so this evidence
has not been found, even though it can contain potential
DNA evidence on there. They were able to extract new
samples of her DNA and they did some stable ipotope
analysis to determine that she likely was not from Missouri
or Illinois and listed a whole bunch of different states
that were alternate candidates. And they have entered her DNA

(02:36):
into the genealogical database get match and found some matches
from some individuals were born about one hundred years ago.
And the genetic genealogist C. C. Moore actually spoke with
descendants of these two people who were the DNA match,
but they decided not to cooperate and instead elected to
remove the relatives DNA from geed match. So it's still

(02:57):
up for debate whether these people might know some thing
about Hope's true identity or if they were just paranoid
about having their DNA being looked at by law enforcement.
But as at the time of this recording, there was
still an effort underway to try to figure out Hope's
identity as well as figure out who killed her, and
it sounds like it's going to be a long and
arduous process, but they're still working at it and I'm

(03:19):
hoping that one day we will finally figure out who
she was. So right from the outset, it was suspected
that Hope had been killed by a family member or
caregiver rather than some random murderer. It seems likely that
the perpetrator went to the trouble of removing her head
to prevent identification via dental records, though they obviously wouldn't
have been thinking of DNA or genetic genealogy back in

(03:42):
nineteen eighty three. In the majority of cases involving deceased
children who cannot be identified, facial reconstruction is used to
create a composite sketch of what the victim may have
looked like. But you're not going to find that on
Hope's profile pages at websites such as the Dough Network
or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Instead,
all they showcase our photographs of Hope's yellow sweater, as

(04:05):
well as the red and white nylon rope which was
used to bind her, and the situation is all the
more sad when you know that those items have since
gone missing. In the Our Precious Hope Revisited documentary, the
police confirmed that they were working with Paarabond nano Labs
in hopes of using DNA phenotyping to create an image
of what Hope might have looked like, but apparently they

(04:27):
cannot guarantee that this process will create reliable composites for
victims under the age of fourteen. I know that investigators
cross checked Hope with a number of missing children's reports
involving African American girls, and one of the most promising
candidates was a twelve year old girl named Sharon Cole,
who vanished outside her family's residence in Manhattan. Not only

(04:48):
did Sharon go missing on February to twenty fifth, nineteen
eighty three, three days before Hope's body was found, but
she was also last seen wearing a gold sweater. However,
if you search online, Ron is on a list of
missing children who have been ruled out as being Hope,
so I'm assuming they've already done a DNA comparison with her.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
If she was twelve years old and went missing, then
she must have been an extremely small twelve year old,
because experts had thought that Hope was between the ages
of eight and eleven, so being one year outside of
that would make me think that she would likely be
quite a bit taller and maybe potentially larger than what

(05:27):
Little Hope would have been. But they obviously got their
answer if they ruled her out there would have been
a reason that they ruled her out. I would hope
it wouldn't be like the pubic care where they're just like, no,
this has nothing to do with it.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
But yeah, I think that they've covered all their bases
as far as looking at promising candidates who can be Hope.
I know that in a lot of these cases involving
John or Jane does online sluice will try to connect
the victim with profile pages they find for missing people,
But more often than not, it turns out when these
victims are identified that they were never officially reported missing.

(06:02):
They're not listed on any of the missing person's websites,
and there's usually no information available about them anywhere on
the internet because there was never an official investigation. So
I'm willing to wager that whoever Hope was, she's not
out there on any missing person's websites, and it's probably
someone we've never heard of before.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
It's wild to think of a little girl between the
ages of eight and eleven being you know, she would
be in school. One would hope, right, One would hope
that like she isn't being kept in a home and
like abused or homeschooled, and so she doesn't have interactions
with the outside world. But when a child vanishes, one

(06:41):
typically as neighbors, other family members, you know, school officials, friends,
people around them would ask those questions. So you've got
to wonder about what type of environment that little Hope
was growing up in or was in if nobody reported
her missing.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, we talked about on our last episode when we
made comparisons to the boy in the box who has
been identified as Joseph Augustus Sorelli, and they're still trying
to piece together as background. But I have a feeling
he was like a shut in who never went to school,
never spent a lot of time interacting with friends or neighbors.
So nobody missed him when he was gone because maybe
people did not even know he existed. And they did

(07:21):
check school records for Hope in Missouri and did not
find any candidates who seemed like lightly matches to her.
So she did go to school. I'm willing to bet
it was in another far away state, and back in
nineteen eighty three in the pre internet world, they probably
maybe if she went missing, just assumed she moved or
something and did not suspect that she would have been
a murdered child found in Saint Louis.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
So.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
At the time Hope was discovered, the FBI considered the
decapitation of such a young victim to be unprecedented, but
another crime of this nature would take place eighteen years later.
On April the twenty eighth, two thousand and one, the
decapitated nude body of an African American girl was discovered
in a wooded area near a park in Kansas City, Missouri,
and three days later, her head was found nearby and

(08:07):
was wrapped in a trash bag. Since she could not
be identified, she was given the nickname Precious Dough, and
of course, given the similarities between the two crimes and
the fact that they both took place in Missouri, it
was speculated that there might be a connection to Precious
Hope's murder. Well, four years later, Precious Dough was positively
identified as four year old Erica Green, and her mother,

(08:29):
Michelle Johnson, and stepfather Heral Johnson were subsequently charged and
convicted of her murder. After severely beating Erica, Harel used
a pair of hedge clippers to sever her head from
her body, and Michelle helped cover up the crime as
she removed Erica's body from the residence in a stroller
to give off the false impression that she was sleeping.

(08:50):
The Johnsons were ruled out as having any involvement in
Hope's murder, but the whole case demonstrated the people are
capable of doing unimaginable things to their own children. It's
possible that a similar situation occurred with Hope, as she
may have been murdered by an abusive stepfather or boyfriend
and her mother helped cover the whole thing up, which
is why she was never reported missing. This is a

(09:12):
scenario which was presented when Vernon Brown became a potential suspect,
but we'll get back to him later. A few years ago,
stable isotope analysis was performed on Hope's bones in an
attempt to figure out where she was from, and while
no less than seventeen states were listed as potential candidates,
the one consistent conclusion from these tests is that she

(09:32):
likely did not hail from Saint Louis or the state
of Missouri. If Hope was not from the area, this
would definitely go a long way towards explaining why no
one was able to figure out her identity.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
And I mean, I just don't feel like we could
rule out that she is from the area because some
of the states were so close by, and she could
have been a recent transplant to Missouri and they wouldn't
have likely been able to tell that from the testing.
If it was just the last six months or year
of her life, they would have known where she grew up.
And like the foundation of that, I would think not

(10:05):
maybe the last few months, but it is possible if
somebody drove across state lines in order to dispose of
a body. There's just a lot of possibilities here. I
just don't think that we can discount it likely say
that she wasn't born there, But to say that she
didn't live there is difficult because there is a lot
of scenarios where she may have been from there, like

(10:25):
the Boy in the box. If the parents were abusive
and they kept her inside and she wasn't allowed to
interact with other people, then people may not even know
that she was there.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
That definitely would make sense. And unlike the boy in
the box whose face was plastered everywhere, no one knows
what Hope looked like, so someone could have seen her
and just not put two and two together. But as
we're going to talk about, I think there's a decent
chance that whoever left her body there was familiar enough
with the neighborhood where it was found, because they knew
to find this dilapidated apartment building. So it could be

(10:58):
a scenario where she wasn't born born in Missouri, but
she was born elsewhere to a mother who was single,
and maybe she found a boyfriend or something in Saint
Louis and they moved there a short time before she
was murdered, and this man turned out to be abusive
and wound up killing her, And for whatever reason, Hope's
mother is just too scared to come forward and has

(11:19):
remained silent all this time, And just because she only
lived in Saint Louis for a brief period of time
that they can't pick that up on the stable isotope
analysis because she was originally born.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Elsewhere, and even that fact that like, okay, well, this
person was likely familiar with the area, I think that
the probability is high that yes, that is true. But
I also think that there's a possibility that that person
could have approached somebody in this very economically depressed area,
like maybe not outside this building and said, hey, I
need you to list off locations of empty buildings, of

(11:53):
buildings that are dilapidated here. I'll give you fifty bucks.
And I bet you there's plenty of people on that
street who would go, oh, yeah, like there is building
a building B, building C, building D, and give them
the geographical locations and collect their fifty bucks. And no
one's ever going to know that that happened or that
it was attached to this case exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
And even if that person heard about that a body
was founded there, I don't think living in that environment,
they're going to come forward and say, by the way,
some guy paybe fifty bucks to recommend a building to
dispose of a body. They're going to stay silent about that.
And while we're on the topic of similar crimes, there
was a promising lead on December the twenty sixth, nineteen
eighty three, when hunters discovered the skull and postcranial skeleton

(12:36):
of an African American girl in the woods behind a
rest area alongside Interstate ninety five in Northampton County, North Carolina.
While the victim's cause of death cannot be established, she
did have signs of trauma to her face to indicate
possible abuse. There was initial speculation that the skull may
have been Precious Hopes missing head, but this possibility was

(12:56):
ruled out. The Northampton County Jane Doe was an entirely
different victim, and to this day she remains unidentified. Well,
there's nothing to conclusively prove that the two cases are connected.
I do find it interesting that North Carolina was listed
as one of the possible states where Hope had lived, so,
for all we know, perhaps Hope's murderer was also responsible

(13:17):
for the death of the Northampton County Jane Doe, though
that's all just speculation. Even if Hope did not live
in Saint Louis, there is evidence to suggest that her
killer was familiar with the area. The abandoned apartment building
where her body was dumped does not seem to be
one of those locations which you will find by pure chance.
Before the Are Precious Hope Revisited documentary was released, many

(13:40):
people were under the impression that the entire neighborhood was
a dilapidated area which was filled with vacant buildings, but
it turns out that it was actually a pretty busy
and active location with a number of residents living there
at that time, so I'm not sure if the perpetrator
would have gone there looking for a place to dispose
of a body unless they already knew that the building
at fifty six thirty five Clemens Avenue would be abandoned.

(14:04):
Since the front entrance was completely boarded up, there's a
good chance they were aware that they could still enter
the building's basement through the back entrance. Given how dark
this basement was, they probably figured it would be a
long time before Hope's body would be found, if it
was even found at all, and it may have been
just pure luck that two teens decided to enter that
basement and light up a cigarette only a few days

(14:26):
after Hope was left there. During that time period, it
was not uncommon for the janitors who worked at these
apartment buildings to live in the basements, but investigators apparently
explored that angle and did not find any records of
former janitors from that particular building who stood out as
potential suspects.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
It was so lucky that those boys decided to go
in there and that they found Little Hope's body, because
otherwise she could have been there forever until that building.
That building could have been torn down and nobody would
have ever known she was there. If you're taking down
a building or rebuilding, a body of a child could

(15:04):
easily get lost in the shuffle, especially if she decomposed
fully and is simply just bones at that time. So
it's scary to think of the thought that they don't
come in and she just languishes there in this purgatory
of sorts where nobody knows where she is, or like
authorities can't find her, nobody's looking for her. It doesn't

(15:26):
seem like any families put on any missing person's flyers
or anything like that. So this little girl would just
be lost to time. But instead she was discovered. So
I think there's a miracle there.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's true, yeah, because this has become one of the
more famous cases involving unidentified decendents of the past forty years.
But those teens don't find her and the building is
torn down, then she is just completely lost to history.
And I think there's a good chance they miss finding
her body. I know that in our last episode, we
made a comparison to that season of The Wire where
a lot of murder victims are hid into appetated buildings

(16:01):
because they think no one's going to look for them there,
And it makes you wonder how often that does happen
where victims are just put in these abandoned places where
no one's going to be searching, and maybe some of
the time they're never found at all. So, getting back
to our precious Hope revisited, I previously mentioned that the
documentary shared a lot of new details I didn't know

(16:21):
before and clarified some misinformation which is spread about the
case over the years. One false detail which has often
been shared over the Internet is that Hope had spineapifita oculta,
which is caused when a gap forms between the vertebrae
and one spinal cord. This would definitely be an important
detail to help match Hope to any missing children out there,

(16:41):
but according to the filmmakers, there is no mention of
spina biffita oculta in the original autopsy report or any
documentation related to the case, so they have no idea
how this false rumor got started in the first place.
The filmmakers arranged for doctor Joy Carter and independent forensic
pathology consultant to perform an analysis of Hope's autopsy, and

(17:03):
she also confirmed some details. It was obviously difficult to
estimate Hope's exact height since her head was missing, but
she's always been listed as being between approximately four foot
ten and five foot four. Five foot four seems pretty
tall for a girl believed to be between eight and
eleven years old, but doctor Carter pointed out that it
wasn't clear if Hope's height was measured from her heel

(17:26):
or her toes. Measuring from the heel is generally considered
to be the most accurate method, and if it had
been done this way, Hope's maximum height would have been
listed as five feet rather than five foot four, and
five feet is an average height for some on her age.
One detail which has been the source of some confusion
was the discovery of a Caucasian male pubic hair on

(17:46):
Hope's right thigh, as is unclear whether it actually belonged
to her killer. If you search online discussions about this case,
you'll often find WTF reactions to the suggestion that the
pubic hare may belong to a police office, and Jeweles
gave one of them as we were recording this and
mentioned it in Part one, but that doesn't necessarily mean
that a cop removed his pants at the crime scene.

(18:08):
There are a number of innocent explanations for how a
pubic hair could have wound up there. For example, if
a police officer went to the bathroom shortly before he
arrived at the scene, one of the hairs could have
transferred to the exterior of his pants before it subsequently
fell off on the Hope's body. Another potential explanation is
that the city of Saint Louis apparently reused body bags

(18:29):
back then, so it's possible that the pubic hair may
have belonged to a previous occupant of the body bag
used to transport Hope. Whatever the case, hairs can transfer
around for a number of different reasons, and since there
wasn't any usable DNA on the hair to begin with,
it's not like it's ever going to be used as
evidence to identify the killer.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I mean, it's obvious that they're not going to
be able to tie it to the killer if they
don't have the DNA on that hair. I don't think
that they can say if they got there innocently or not,
because they just don't have that information. And we went
over that in Part one. I think it's a little
bit weird that they're dismissing it as being tied to
the case, when truly they just don't know one way

(19:10):
or the other. But yet they seem to dismiss the evidence,
and I really want to know why.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
And we've actually seen in recent years where evidence that
was previously had no traces of DNA on it has
been given new, more advanced testing at more advanced labs,
and they've been able to get DNA samples that weren't
there before and used it to identify people or solve cases.
So you never know if it might happen in this case.
If they decided to do more advanced testing on this pubicare,

(19:37):
maybe they will get a DNA and find out that
it actually matches a convicted murderer and not a police officer.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
I would like to know the last date that they
tested this pubicare for DNA, because if it was twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen, or if it was back in the late
eighties when DNA was first coming to the forefront, it
would really matter because the technology has improved moved so
much since then.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, and I've actually seen a couple of cold cases
in recent years get solved because of that. Of course,
one of the most interesting portions of the documentary was
getting some clarification on the circumstances of how Hope's sweater
and the nylon rope used to bind her hands when missing.
If you go on redditch or any message boards and
find threads under such titles as what are the all

(20:23):
time worse mistakes in a police investigation, the slmpd's decision
to mail these items to a psychic will frequently get mentioned.
I mean, so many people are skeptical about psychics to
begin with, and question the value of the police using
them in investigations, but the idea of mailing key pieces
of evidence to a psychic that's living in another state
is pretty mind boggling. This particular psychic, Mariene Vernier, has

(20:48):
always proclaimed herself to be a psychic detective who has
assisted with hundreds of police investigations and unsolved mysteries. Actually
produced a segment about her not too long after she
appeared on the Sightings episode about Precious Hope. You can
actually watch this Sighting's episode on YouTube, and it chows
Rainier having so called psychic visions from touching the sweater

(21:08):
and the rope. The whole thing comes across as pretty
silly as Rainier. A middle aged woman starts talking like
a little girl after Hope's spirit supposedly enters her body.
I find it telling that even though there is a
ton of information available about this case, almost none of
it discusses the so called leads that Rainier provided, such
as Hope's killer being a teacher who is dishonorably discharged

(21:31):
from the military. Based on the description Rainier provided, A
composite sketch of this man was created during the Sightings episode,
and he appears to be an African American male with
a mustache. However, I cannot find this composite sketch anywhere
when I research online, which gives me the impression that
investigators do not consider any of Varnier's information to be
biable leads. But no matter what you think of Vernier,

(21:55):
if our precious Hope Revisited is accurate, then it is
not her fault that the sweater and the rope went missing,
as the SLMPD apparently lost the items after she returned them.
When the filmmakers interviewed Sergeant Brian McGlynn and asked him
to provide the receipt which proved that the items arrived
at the police station. He seemed reluctant to do so,

(22:15):
possibly to avoid implicating the officer who was responsible for
losing them. I mean, regardless of whether the items were
lost by Rainier or the police department, the whole situation
does not reflect well on them. But at least some
additional context and clarification were provided to explain how something
like this could have happened to begin with. If the
items were returned, it would not surprise me at all

(22:38):
if they were misfiled and are currently sitting in an
evidence room somewhere inside the wrong box. I don't get
the impression that any traces of the killer's DNA were
found on the evidence, but these items went missing in
nineteen ninety four, and forensics have advanced so much since then,
so it's possible that new DNA testing could turn up
something if the sweater or the rope are ever found.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Such a major oversight in this case, and we can't
emphasize that enough. The fact that they mailed this evidence
to Rainier, Okay, like that was clearly something that was
like a nineteen eighties type of a thing to do
with a crime to mail it to a psychic for
some type of program sightings. I get that everything had
that like paranormal twist with the entertainment of it all,

(23:22):
but to then blame Rainier when she clearly, it seems,
if we're to trust the documentary, did send these items back.
And I think you're right. I think it's possible that
those items could be sitting in some evidence room somewhere
and they're improperly filed, or they're filed under something else.
I mean, there's a possibility that they were just lost
or destroyed, but I think there's definitely a possibility that

(23:46):
somewhere those items are just waiting to be discovered and
tied back to this case.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
It would be a nice lucky break if someone is
searching for evidence from another case and opens the box
and says, hey, what's the sweater in this rope doing,
and then by pure chance, they find the missing evidence
from this case. But I would like that to happen,
considering that it could hold the key to identifying hope,
and considering that a miracle almost occurred when the two
teens founder in that abandoned building, I can kind of

(24:13):
hold out hope that something like this might happen here.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
I'll be very interested if in time they do solve
the case, or if Hope gets her identity back to
see if the composite sketch that Rainier had done with
the African American male with the mustache and him being
ex and military would line up with any of her
family members.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
That is true. I mean, like I said, I've only
seen it on the Sightings episode. I have not seen
the composite sketch anywhere onlines, which makes me think that
law enforcement doesn't put much stock into it. And if
you watch any of Mariene Rainier's like so called touch
thing where she's touching items and the spirit of the
victim is going inside of her, it is pretty silly
and unintentionally funny. So I don't put much stock into it.

(24:57):
But if she turns out to be right, that would
be great.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well. I think it's pretty hard to take serious an
adult woman who's then taking on the persona of a
little girl and starts talking in that little girl's voice
like it's a very serious matter. But it's hard not
to find something like that slightly humorous.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
It is, Yes, it's kind of pretty much a product
of its time, because those type of things were on
TV all the time during the nineteen nineties, but in
today's day and age, they do not pass muster. So
one curious detail about the sweater is is that it
appeared to be brand new and it had its tag removed.
You might assume that the perpetrator went to the trouble
of removing the tag in order to make it more

(25:36):
difficult to trace where it was purchased. But why bother
leaving the sweater on Hope's body to begin with, especially
since she was not wearing any other clothing. During the documentary,
the director managed to find a sweater that was pretty
much identical to the one that Hope wore and confirmed
that it was being sold in stores in Saint Louis
back in nineteen eighty three. Of course, that doesn't prove

(25:57):
the sweater was originally purchased in Saint Louis, but it
should that it's a possibility. In spite of the brutal
nature of Hope's murder and the fact that she was
sexually assaulted, she appeared to have been fairly well cared
for prior to her death, and there ren signs that
she was the victim of long term abuse, So if
she was murdered by a parent or a caregiver, how

(26:17):
did things reach the point where they decided to do
this to her. There is no shortage of potential theories,
such as Hope being a victim of human trafficking. If
she was given away or sold by her family to
the person who eventually killed her, that would explain why
no one has ever come forward to identify her. But
a couple of deceased serial killers have also been looked

(26:37):
at as potential suspects. One of the most tomulant cells
who was executed in Texas in April of twenty fourteen
for the murder of a thirteen year old girl, but
the authorities believe he was responsible for killing at least
twenty two people during his lifetime. Sales committed murders in
a number of different states, and while he was never
officially charged with the following crime, he was suspected to

(26:59):
be responsible for the murders of a woman named Colleen
Gill and her four year old daughter, Tiffany Gil, who
are both beaten to death with a blunt object inside
their home in Saint Louis on July the thirty first
nineteen eighty three. The Gill residence was only a few
blocks away from the apartment building where Hope's body was found,
and given the timeframe, investigators looked at Seals as a

(27:20):
potential suspect in or murder as well. He was interviewed
by detectives on death Row, but they were ultimately inclined
to believe that he wasn't involved in Hope's death.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
I mean, those were people close to him, and it
wouldn't appear as though Hope would have been somebody who
was close or a relative, because she wasn't reported missing
by anybody else. So I think there are some differences
there with the victimology when you've got victims who are
close to you, rather than him just predating on some

(27:51):
girl and grabbing her off the street, if that's what
we're to believe that happened. I think it's an interesting
thing about the sweater. I don't know necessarily think that,
like you cut off a tag because you don't want
that person to be identified. I think in life it's
very possible that you could have had just sensitivity issues,
like I have sensitivity issues. If there's like a scratchy

(28:12):
tag or things that like, aren't the right fabric? It
will drive me crazy. And I know that is common
with certain people with sensory processing disorders or autism spectrum disorder,
or it can be something that just anybody can deal with,
Right if you've got sensitive skin, you don't like it's
itchy tag. I get that, And I think, yeah, we
could think it's like any of those cases where we

(28:34):
think there's a spy, right, like the Summerton man or
what they saw a woman, and we then go like,
there's no tags on their clothes, they must be a spy.
But I think there's just a likelihood that, like, maybe
this person didn't enjoy the feeling of scratchy fabric against
their skin.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah. I always seen that on online discussions about unidentified
deceiteds who don't have tags in their clothing. And obviously
the Summerton man is the most famous example of this,
and he was also identified in twenty twenty two, and
it turns out he's just a regular guy who seemed
to have some mental health issues, but nothing in his
background to suggest he was a spy. But a lot
of people in these online discussions say the same thing

(29:11):
as you, saying that when I buy new clothing. I
always removed the tags because I just find it uncomfortable
and itchy. So if I was found dead in a
public place somewhere, I can only imagine what people would
speculate about my background. But in actuality, most of the time,
there's nothing unusual about it at all.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, I can see how if you're not somebody who's
affected by that, how you could look at an individual
having no tags and think that's like atypical or weird
in some type of a way. But when you have
the perspective of being somebody who does that, it's like, oh, well,
I think there's a myriad of reasons that that could
happen to a little girl's clothing.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, Like Hope could have just been bought it for
Christmas or something and just found the tag to be uncomfortable,
so her parents removed it, And that's there's nothing more
nefarious than that. That's just the most logical explanation. So
that now brings us to child murderer Vernon Brown, who
was definitely a vile individual, and it's not hard to
believe he would be capable of something like this. Officially,

(30:08):
Brown has been linked to three murders two of them
involving victims who are around Hope's age, and much like Hope,
they were strangled to death. When Brown was charged with
murder in nineteen eighty six, he was living only a
few miles away from the building where Hope was discovered.
But one thing which isn't entirely clear to me are
Brown's whereabouts in February of nineteen eighty three. We know

(30:29):
that he moved to Saint Louis and changed his name
after a wart was issued for his arrest in Indianapolis,
but I don't know when exactly this took place. It
was theorized that Hope could have been the daughter of
one of Brown's girlfriends, and he frightened this woman into
staying silent after he killed her. We know that Brown
was living with Kathy Moore and her three sons when
he murdered Janet Perkins, but I'm not sure if they

(30:51):
were together in nineteen eighty three. I suppose one of
the things which might make me suspect Brown is that
when he was questioned about Hope's murder prior to his
exit acution, he never actually denied it. He only replied, quote,
I've got nothing to say to you. But even when
they reach the point where they have nothing left to lose,
it is par for the course for condemned murderers to

(31:11):
be untruthful about their involvement or non involvement in other
unsolved crimes because they still love to keep using the
opportunity to toy with people. I would certainly like to
believe that Brown was Hope's killer, because justice was served
with him and he is no longer around to harm
anyone else. However, I should note that our precious Hope
Revisited does not make any mention of Vernon Brown at all,

(31:33):
which makes me wonder if investigators no longer consider him
to be a promising suspect, or if he's been ruled
out altogether. One reason I'm inclined to believe that Brown
is not the perpetrator is because of the circumstances of
how he murdered Janet Perkins. He really did not make
much effort to conceal that particular crime at all, as
he simply placed her body in two trash bags and

(31:56):
tossed her in a dumpster in the alley behind his residence,
so it really didn't take much for police to solve
the case. And make an arrest after she was found.
Compare that to the circumstances of how Hope was murdered
as the killer went to the trouble of removing her
head for vent identification and carrying her body into the
basement of an abandoned building. I just can't reconcile Brown

(32:17):
going to the trouble of doing all that and then
being so lazy when covering up the murder of another
girl three years later. So unless conclusive evidence ever surfaces
to link Brown to Hope's case, I'm inclined to believe
he was not or killer.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
I agree, and I think it's interesting with the decapitation.
It could either be one of two things. I think
the most likely explanation in most cases is they're trying
to obscure an identification, but it also could be some
perverse part of the process that the killer enjoys and
it's part of their mo is the decapitation that they

(32:52):
might like for any variety of reasons. But I just
Vernon Brown is so horrible. He's one of the words
that I've heard of in any case. Hands down, his
actions were monstrous, and he was just capable of the
most egregious acts against people that were supposed to trust him,

(33:12):
like his partner's three boys, and that just really stuck
with me. Anyone that he could predate on, he would,
And so it's really easy to associate him with another
awful crime, which is Little Hope being found without her head.
And do I think that he didn't know? Do I
think justice was served there, even though we talked about

(33:35):
how neither of us really believe in the death penalty,
but we're not shedding tears over Vernon Brown. So there
was justice in those cases for the people who are
victimized by him. But I just I don't get the
gut feeling that he is the perpetrator in Little Hope's case.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, And like I said, because he was not mentioned
in the documentary, it makes me wonder if they've turned
up new information which rules him out because he was
originally from Indianapolis, and I don't know the exact time
that he moved to Saint Louis to live under a
false name. So they were able to turn up evidence
which shows that he was still in Indianapolis in February
of nineteen eighty three, then that positively rules him out

(34:14):
as a suspect in this case, but of course figuring
out who murdered Hope will probably require her to be
identified first, so it was good to learn that CCMORE
and Parabondanolobs are currently working on this case. As you recall,
a genetic match was found between Hope and the DNA
for two individuals who were born around one hundred years ago,

(34:35):
and when More attempted to contact the granddaughter of one
of these people, she refused to cooperate and pulled a
relative's DNA from the gen match database. On the surface,
this might look incredibly suspicious, as if this woman knows
exactly what happened to precious Hope and does not want
their family's dark secret coming out. But that may not
necessarily be the case, as you have to remember that

(34:57):
most people out there are not true crime fans acts
like us, and do not have a devout interest in
cold cases and using genetic genealogy to solve them. So
just imagine if you were someone who didn't follow this
stuff and then suddenly get a phone call informing you
that law enforcement is hoping to use your relatives DNA
to help assist them with a cold case investigation. You

(35:18):
can understand why some people might be taken aback by that,
particularly if they have a natural distrust of law enforcement.
So even if this woman had no knowledge of Precious Hope,
she may become paranoid over the idea of a relative's
DNA being so accessible. For all we know, the person
who was a genetic match to Hope may have been
some very distant relative who never even knew of the

(35:40):
girl's existence.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, I agree. I think there's a lot of different
reasons why this woman shut this down and was like, Okay,
I'm going to remove this person's DNA. But I also
thought the jedmatch was the ancestry dot com or twenty
three and meters. It's specifically there isn't it for the
purpose of putting your You choose to put your DNA

(36:02):
on there. The purpose is to potentially solve crimes. Is that?
Is that my understanding?

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, I'm just gonna double check if this started before
twenty eighteen, because I can't remember if this was around
before they were using it for cold cases. Oh no,
it was actually started in twenty ten, which was a
long time before they were using it in law enforcement investigations.
So I think some of the people at first who
put their DNA in there had no idea that it
was going to become a tool to help solve cold

(36:30):
cases and be used by law enforcement. So I can
understand maybe if just an average person has not been
following what's been happening in true crime, and they uploaded
their DNA, say back in twenty ten, or one of
the relatives uploaded their DNA, they might be taken aback
if they suddenly receive a phone call saying that, hey,
a DNA of a relative of yours is link to
the murder of this girl from Saint Louis in nineteen

(36:52):
eighty three. So that kind of makes it more understandable
if you originally put your DNA in there with no
idea how it was eventually going to be used.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
What would have been the person's initial objective? Was it
like connecting family members? What was it for?

Speaker 2 (37:06):
I think it was. Let me just double check here.
I always assumed it was something very similar to ancestry
dot com. No, it looks like it was mostly used
for the purposes of family trees and stuff like that,
just trying to match up DNA with relatives to learn
your family history or your ancestry or something. Okay, So yeah,
I can understand people submitting it, and for what I

(37:26):
can tell, Like, would the woman who was phone submitted
it herself? But would it only been a relative. I
guess it was only a relative who submitted it. So
I guess if the woman didn't submit it and had
no idea what these websites were for and was just
told it's a genetic match to you, then she would
have been taken aback.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Perhaps they almost made it sound like she was the
one who submitted it because she they said that she
then removed her relatives DNA. But I guess if it
was another family member, then maybe she found out who
submitted the DNA and got them to remove it. I
guess either option is possible, But I guess with that
contextual clue, it gives us a little bit more understanding

(38:04):
into what could have been her frame of mind when
she received that phone call and it was like a
WTF moment. And I can understand if you don't have
a trust in law enforcement, you're not up on true crime,
you think this is none of my business. I want
to stay out of this. I don't want to implicate
anybody in my family and have to deal with the
ramifications of that, So just don't even involve me. I

(38:25):
can understand that given what the initial objective was and
how this is a completely different thing.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
And as a side note, I met a gentleman at
advocacy con that I attended Indianapolis several weeks ago, who
his brother went missing in nineteen eighty and for completely
unrelated reasons back in twenty fourteen, he decided to submit
his DNA to some ancestry website, just figuring that it
would be used to like find other relatives or connect
his family tree, and he had no inkling that it

(38:54):
was going to be used in a law enforcement investigation.
And he claimed in twenty twenty three he received a
fault call where they just suddenly told him out of
the blue, did you have a brother go missing back
in nineteen eighty because we have just linked your DNA
to a dead body that was found in another state.
And he was like, probably like this person where he
submitted his DNA, and that even though we had a

(39:15):
missing relative, he had no inkling that someone was going
to pull that DNA one day and use it to
find out what happened to his brother.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Wow, Well, that certainly is a circumstance where it worked
out for the best.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Definitely yeah. And it was a case where he went
missing from Chicago and was founded in the town of
Ryan Lander. Wisconstant and that he died like only a
few months after he went missing, But they just had
no inkling that he was there. And it only got
solved because of DNA and these genealogical websites. So trying
to put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure

(39:47):
out Hope's identity might be a long and arduous process.
We saw a situation like that in a case involving
an unidentified victim known as the El Dorado Jane Doe,
who was murdered in nineteen ninety one and was profiled
all the way back on episode number eight of The
Trail Went Cold. The El Dorado Jane Doe cannot be
identified for three decades, but in January of twenty nineteen,

(40:09):
it was announced that genetic genealogy had linked her to
a second cousin who had uploaded her DNA into the
jed Maatch database. However, it took another three years to
determine her true identity, and while details are sketchy, one
of the possible reasons it took so long to figure
everything out was because she may be conceived during an
affair or one night stand and her biological father had

(40:31):
no idea she even existed. So we may have a
similar situation unfold in Hope's case, where even if her
biological family is identified, it might take a while to
put everything together and determine her true identity and the
circumstances which led to her being murdered.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Wow, it's just so crazy how many of these cases
there are out there, like the El Dorado Jane Doe
and being able to solve that. I just always think
of your list first of yes individuals and only the one.
What's the one that isn't solved?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Still a little miss Panasofki, who we mentioned on our
last episode, which is one where I think the reason
she hasn't been solved is she may have originally hailed
from Europe before she was murdered in the United States,
and they have different rules for DNA and genetic geology
over there. But I'm just hoping one day that they
can identify her and make it ten for ten Because
I wrote that list back in twenty thirteen and all

(41:28):
these years later, nine out of the ten decedents on
that list, including El Dorado Jane Doe, have since been identified.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
And what would you say? In like most cases, as
far as the theories went about the victims or the
potential crimes, how close were internet sleuths, Well a.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Lot of the time they were wrong. One funny thing
is that the El Dorado Jane Doe. I'm sure you've
heard of the fort Worth Missing Trio case, right, yes, yes, yes, yes,
And I remember that to the person who killed El Dorado,
Jane Doe was making these crypt to comments in prison
about how he might have been responsible for the disappearance
of three girls in Texas, which took place in the
nineteen seventies, and people were wondering, oh, could this woman

(42:09):
maybe be one of the missing girls from the fort
Worth Missing Trio case? But of course that didn't turn
out to be the case. And more often than not,
the theories surrounding these decendents are a lot more elaborate
and sensationalistic than what turns out to be the truth.
Like you have stuff about how people escape from a cult,
or they might have gone underground in some like a

(42:30):
terrorist organization or something like that, or been a spy,
but more often than not, they're just people who decided
to break off all contact with their families, go out
on their own, and unfortunately cross paths with someone who
murdered them.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
I always think of this summer to man. I know
he has identity back, but I can't think of his
name off the top of my head. But I always
think of the theory of him being a ballerina.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Oh yeah, that's another ridiculous one. Yeah. So, while I'm
sure it won't be easy, I do have a feeling
that it will only be a matter of time until
the Saint Louis Jane Doe is identified. Given that over
forty years have passed, it's possible that the person who
was responsible for murdering her is now deceased and will
never face justice. But at the very least, this poor

(43:10):
girl can finally get her name back. This is a
case which has made a vivid impression on everyone who
has heard about it, and while it's undeniable that the
Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department made mistakes during their investigation,
I don't doubt that everyone who worked on this case
was genuinely passionate about solving it. Some of the former
detectives who have since retired or passed away said that

(43:31):
they were always haunted by the fact that they could
never close the books on this one. But like we
mentioned earlier on in this episode, if Joseph Augustus Airelli,
a boy who was murdered all the way back in
nineteen fifty seven, can be identified, there's always hope for
this girl. Hell, that's why they nicknamed her Precious Hope.
But it will be nice if we can start referring
to her by a real name. So if you happen

(43:52):
to have any information about the identity of the Saint
Louis Jane Doe or the circumstances of her murder, please
contact the Saint Louis Metropolitan Police Department at three one
four two three one one two one two. That's three
one four two three one one two one two Jules.
Any final thoughts on this case.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
This is a really heartbreaking but interesting case, just because
there really are relatives out there and they don't want
to be involved. I really hope through genetic genealogy they're
able to link some more people who do want to
be involved and do want to participate, and they can
build out that family tree and give Hope back her

(44:32):
identity because she deserves that. But at least in the meantime,
I'm thankful that the city of Saint Louis wrapped their
arms around her and they really took her in like
a child of their own, and I think that's such
a beautiful thing. But this case is shocking to think
that there is nobody close by who's a little girl
who's reported missing. And I don't know how much we

(44:54):
can rely on those isotope tests. It's too bad that
there isn't the accuracy, and I think the fact that
we don't have teeth obviously lends itself to that. But
to think that a caregiver could do this to a child,
to decapitate them, and we brought up another case where
a little girl was also decapitated, and it seems like

(45:15):
if you don't want to have somebody be identified, they're
obviously tied to you in some way, unless it's some
part of your murder process where you just enjoy removing heads.
I think that there's a strong likelihood in this case
that there is somebody who was in a caretaker position
who was responsible for Hope's death.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, I think that's what happened as well. And while
we don't know this for certain, that's a lot of
people think what happened with the Boy in the Box
slash Joseph Augustus Relli case where because they were kept
away from society and not many people interacted with the
victim while they were still alive. That's why no one
has been able to put two and two together and
figure out who she is. And I still remember it

(45:55):
was twenty eighteen when they started using jed match and
they kept using it to identify all these John and
Jane does and everyone was thinking, ooh, they will eventually
get to Saint Louis Jane Doe. It's inevitable that she's
going to be identified. But here we are, about seven
years since Jed Maatch became a thing, and it still
hasn't happened yet, even though people are still actively working

(46:15):
on it. And I think most loose out there would
rank this as their number one choice of a victim
to be identified, because her story is so heartbreaking and
that she was beheaded and assaulted and discarded like garbage
in this abandoned building. Yet over the past forty years,
so many people have become attached to this girl and
are really hoping that she can finally get her name back.

(46:36):
I also need to give a recommendation for Precious Hope.
Revisited the documentary we talked about a few times. Like
I said earlier, the guy who directed it ed rar
byrds Sosa. He was nice enough to email me after
my original Trail and Cold episode. Seems like a really
nice guy who's really passionate about getting this case solved.
And if you haven't seen it, it's available for viewing
on to be and it has a lot of information

(46:59):
that had not and made publicly before the movie came out,
and it's spreading even more awareness. So I think it's
going to eventually pave the way to her being identified.
And one final thing I wanted to mention is that
I often do Q and A episodes on the Trail
Went Cold at the end of the year, and one
question I often get asked is which case have you

(47:19):
covered on the podcast do you think is going to
be solved in the near future. One year, I was
asked and my pick was the Jane Doe known only
as Orange Socks, which we've talked about as well, who
was eventually identified as Deborah Jackson, and on another Q
and A episode, my prediction was a murdered man and
woman who were known as the Sumpter County Does, who

(47:40):
are both shot to death in a remote area of
South Carolina, and within a month of me releasing that
Q and A episode, they were finally identified as well.
So and the Q and AA episode I released at
the end of twenty twenty four, my pick was the
Saint Louis Jane Doe. So I'm hoping that the good
Luck Street will continue and that she will be identified
at some point this year.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Robin the Psychic Detective, Yes, I.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Mean I'm better than Maaren Vernier. What can I say?

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Bring that up?

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Yeah, and you don't have to mail me any sweaters
or ropes or any key pieces of evidence. I can
do that without it. So thanks for joining us, Jules.
Hopefully we'll have Ashley back for our next series of episodes.
So thank you all so much for joining us, and
we'll see you again next time.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(48:50):
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
and if you join our highest tier tier free the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(49:14):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of the Path Went chili. We've got our
Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very many, but they're just too short
to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or d rate and review is greatly
a pre ciate it. You can email us at the
Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on
Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure
to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call
for warm clothing.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy