PHOENIX — Police in Arizona have determined that decomposed remains found in a remote desert area outside Phoenix in August 1992 were those of missing 15-year-old Melody Harrison.
Apache Junction police announced Thursday that advances in DNA testing helped them make the discovery, 31 years after Harrison’s disappearance in June 1992.
Police said in a news release that the case quickly fell apart after the remains were found, and that for decades the remains were known only as “Apache Junction Jane Doe,” who they believed to be between 16 and 18 years old at the time of her death.
The case was later entered into a database maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Unidentified Persons System.
According to the submission, authorities believed the teen had been dead between three and five weeks before her remains were found. She was wearing Levi’s jeans, a shirt with footballs on the front and back and a yellow ring on her left hand. In the front pockets of her trousers, according to the database entry, police found a public transport token with the words ‘Valid for one student fare’.
In 1996, four years after her relatives reported her missing, the family removed her from the missing person database, believing she was still alive but “didn’t want to go home” after several reports of possible sightings of the teenager , authorities said. .
The case was revived in 2008 after Apache Junction police investigator Stephanie Bourgeois took over, but DNA testing at the time was unsuccessful, the police department said.
Then in 2018, Bourgeois hired the DNA Doe Project, a volunteer research group that specializes in forensic genealogical analysis. Police said investigators used DNA from the remains to build a comprehensive profile, which led them to possible relatives.
“It would take five years and countless hours of dedicated research by more than a dozen volunteer genetic genealogists to find the crucial breakthrough in this case,” DNA Doe Project said in a post on its website, highlighting the case as one of its success stories. .
A second test comparing DNA from the suspected relatives confirmed that “Apache Junction Jane Doe” was Harrison, police said.
“There is peace of mind now that we have found Melody’s identity and shared it with her family, but there is no closure surrounding the circumstances of her death,” Bourgeois said in a statement. “We are still trying to determine how she died.”