Unidentified murder victim will be exhumed
The body of an unidentified woman found dead in Sequoyah County 15 years ago is to be exhumed.
An order to exhume Dora Doe’s body was signed Jan. 13 by A.J. Henshaw, Sequoyah County associate district judge. Her remains will be collected for more DNA testing in hopes of identifing her, or her killer.
Because the woman was never identified and because of the location of her body, she was referred to as Dora Doe. She was eventually buried at Roland Cemetery on Mayfield Road.
The body was found two miles south of Dora on the intersection of Interstate 40 and U.S. Highway 64D on Oct. 23, 1994. The woman’s head was found 15 feet away and faced her body, which was swathed in landscaping material with twine wrapped around it. A hole about eight inches by five inches was found in her chest, and her left lung and heart were missing.
Witnesses told investigators that between 4 and 4:30 p.m. Oct. 5, 1994 they saw a white male, about 6 feet tall with dark brown hair and a moustache, dragging a black bag near the area where her body was found.
Authorities released a composite sketch of the man and created a reconstruction of Dora Doe’s face. Physical characteristics of Dora Doe were also released in 1994. Investigators believed she was 5 feet, 3 inches tall with a small build and short dark graying hair. Medical examiners determined the woman was close to age 50. They determined she was of mixed race, Caucasian and possibly Oriental or American Indian. The case was never solved.
With new technology and a new cold case unit, investigators with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) are hoping to extract DNA that could possibly reveal who Dora Doe is and discover what may have happened to her.
According to the petition of exhumation, OSBI agents are trying to obtain a known DNA sample from Dora Doe’s body, then compare that known sample to a piece of evidence found in a brutal 1995 murder of a woman in Fort Smith, Ark.
According to the petition, in July 1995 Ruth Henderson was found murdered in her home just outside of Fort Smith. OSBI agents discovered a small piece of tissue lodged in Henderson’s left ear canal. Laboratory analysis at the Arkansas State Police laboratory revealed the tissue was lung tissue that did not belong to Henderson.
On Jan. 4 an attempt was made to extract a DNA profile from Dora Doe’s known hair samples, but the attempt was not successful. Because of the new technology available for DNA testing, the OSBI will exhume Dora Doe’s body and try to successfully extract DNA from her remains.
Sequoyah County Sheriff Ron Lockhart said although there has been an order issued to exhume Dora Doe, a date has not been set to begin digging.
Cold Case Unit
The OSBI recently received a grant from the National Institute of Justice for about $500,000 to fund a new cold case unit.
Lockhart said he recently met with OSBI agents who briefed him on nine or 10 unsolved cases or cold cases in Sequoyah County. Now the sheriff’s office has plans to refresh its cold case files.
“We will be working with the OSBI on these cold case files. Some of the unsolved homicides are 30 years old. The OSBI is trying to obtain new DNA by the new technology that is available,” Lockhart said. “We will be releasing more information about a few cold case files in the county as soon as we get more information about them.”
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