A body known only as “Sahara Sue Doe” for 44 years after it was discovered in an open field near the Las Vegas Strip has been identified as a teenager from Ohio.
Gwenn Marie Story was 19 when she left her home in 1979 in search of her biological father, authorities have said.
However, her body was discovered the same year near what is today a busy intersection of the Las Vegas Strip.
An autopsy revealed that she had been the victim of a homicide, police said, but investigators weren’t able to identify her until they partnered with a private DNA testing laboratory in September 2022.
Authorities believe Ms Story died within 24 hours prior to the discovery, according to an entry detailing the case in a database maintained by the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children in the US.
Ms Story has been known as “Sahara Sue Doe”, nicknamed after the intersection where she was found, before she was identified last month.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said on Tuesday that advancements in DNA testing led to the identification.
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A man discovered the body on the night of 14 August 1979 while walking through a vacant lot near the northern edge of the Las Vegas Strip, police said.
She had wavy hair, and her fingernails and toenails were painted red.
The Strat Hotel currently looms large over that intersection, which features the Sahara hotel-casino.
Othram, a US company which specialises in forensic genealogy analysis, said in a statement Tuesday that its scientists built “a comprehensive DNA profile for the woman”, leading authorities to possible relatives who provided DNA samples that confirmed “Sahara Sue Doe” was the missing Ohio teen.
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Ms Story’s relatives told police that she left home in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the summer of 1979 in search of her father in California.
They said she travelled with two male friends.
Story’s family never heard from her again.
When the two friends returned to the Cincinnati area in August that year – the same month that Story was found dead – they told the teen’s family that they had left her in Las Vegas, police said.
The police department says it is now turning its focus to those two friends and how Story wound up dead near the Las Vegas Strip.
The breakthrough in Story’s case comes amid advancements in genetic testing that in recent years have led to more identifications and arrests in long-unsolved cases – from missing persons and homicide investigations to sexual assault cases.
Earlier this year, Othram also helped Nevada State Police identify a victim who was nameless for 45 years after her heavily decayed remains were found in a garment bag in a remote area of northern Nevada in October 1978.
The victim in that case, Florence Charleston, also went missing from Ohio.
