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Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Five days before Christmas on December 20th, 1976, a teenager was walking along the banks of the Lehigh River in Whitehaven, Pennsylvania, a 100-mile river that flows near Interstate 80 in eastern Pennsylvania. The teen had gone down to the river to play for a couple of hours, something he did almost every day, but he spotted something unusual as he approached the water's edge.
something that shouldn't be in the water, a dismembered human head. He immediately went straight home and called the police to tell them what he saw. And within minutes, officers from the Pennsylvania State Police and the Carbon County Coroner were the first ones to arrive. But they didn't only stumble upon a dismembered human head. Floating in the river were three separate suitcases. Each suitcase contained parts of a dismembered female victim.
One of the bags contained what investigators believed was the adult female's unborn full-term baby girl. It appeared like the three suitcases had been thrown from a nearby bridge into the river by a car traveling westbound. The culprit probably intended for the suitcases to end up in the water, but two of the bags actually landed in the woods about 20 feet away.
Since it seems like the bags were thrown from the bridge about 300 feet above the ground, two suitcases broke open when they hit the ground. The bags contained the head, unborn baby girl, and two halves of her torso. When the bodies were pulled from the suitcases, forensic pathologist Dr. Halbert Fillinger from the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office was responsible for their autopsies.
After a three-hour-long autopsy, he learned that on top of being dismembered, the adult female had also been shot, strangled, and sexually assaulted. There was even evidence that she suffered genital trauma, but the forensic pathologist couldn't tell if that was done before or after she was killed. Her body was sawed into 10 pieces. Her torso alone had been severed into two separate pieces.
Her head was severed, her nose and ears were cut off, and her arms and legs. But no one was quite sure why. Was it because whoever did this really wanted to dismember her? Or was it simply out of convenience? He needed to do it so that she would fit inside the suitcases. There was one thing that stood out to investigators, and that was, whoever did this didn't seem to have any medical or surgical background.
Now, despite being able to dismember an adult female body and cut out her unborn baby, they seem to lack any type of medical experience or knowledge. That's because the cuts themselves were extremely sloppy and were made by a fine serrated tool. So it just didn't seem like to be the work of a doctor or surgeon.
However, investigators believed that they did have some type of skill at dismembering. Because remember, on top of sawing her body into 10 separate pieces, he was also able to get her unborn baby out to do the same. So this told the police that at the bare minimum, he did have some knowledge when it came to dismemberment. He just didn't have any type of medical or surgical background because simply put, it was just too messy.
She didn't have any identification on her, so the best the forensic pathologist could do was make some guesses about who she was. Based on everything he found, he believed that she was about 16 to 22 years old, around 5 feet 10, and weighed 145 pounds. She had what he described as distinct dental work, a couple of small markings on her body, and two moles on her face.
One was above her left eye, and the other was on her left cheek. Some of her molars had been removed sometime before she became a teenager, and some of her teeth had fillings, indicated that she received dental work at some point. But many of her teeth were rotten or decaying. So this also told investigators that it had been quite some time since she'd been to the dentist.
One of her teeth in particular was so rotten that it must have been bugging her like crazy before she died. Her hair was a dark brown color and was cut to about her shoulders. But other than that, she was a complete Jane Doe. Then there was her unborn full-term baby. The forensic pathologist estimated that the mom was about nine months pregnant when she died. So her baby was only weeks, maybe just days away from being born.
Based on the conditions of both bodies, the forensic pathologist had an idea about when they might have died, but he wasn't 100% sure. Now at first, he thought that they were killed about 24 hours before their body parts were discovered. But then he thought it could be a little bit longer, possibly up to a week earlier. That's because the cold river water might have helped to preserve their bodies. Investigators found other clues inside the suitcases.
Inside were six sheets of paper from the September 26, 1976 edition of the New York Sunday News. So maybe that particular day had something to do with the case. And this specific newspaper also had some connection to the northern part of New Jersey. Some of the woman and baby's body parts had been wrapped in the newspaper clippings.
while others were wrapped in a reddish-orange bedspread with yellow and pink flowers on it. The suitcases themselves looked like they had been spray-painted with black paint. Two of them were striped with red, white, and blue, and the other one was tan with a plaid design on it. All three of them were made from some type of vinyl material, and they were all the same size. Noticeably missing from each one of the suitcases was its handles."
One suitcase had her arms and legs. The second one contained her head and unborn baby girl. And the third had her torso. But some of her body had never been recovered, like her ears, nose, and breasts. Even after they searched this entire part of the river, they never found them. A strange set of numbers were found inked on her body.
The ink, which investigators thought came from a ballpoint pen, were left on her left palm. This suggested that the victim might have been right-handed because they believed she was the one who wrote it. The numbers were 4 or 5, followed by 4 or 7. There were also the letters WSR written next to the numbers.
but the police didn't find any clues suggesting what the letters or numbers meant, or if they had anything to do with what happened to her. The Pennsylvania State Police were convinced that this was a very angry attack. Whoever did this was obviously very mad and very disturbed. What else could explain why someone would murder and dismember a young pregnant woman, someone no older than 22 years old, and quite possibly as young as a teenager?
They also wondered if this was a personal attack. Could this be an angry ex-boyfriend or the father to her unborn child seeking revenge? But since they had no idea who this girl was, they had no way of thinking of possible suspects. Nothing about this screamed that it was a random crime. If she had been kidnapped and assaulted, why go through all the trouble of dismembering her?
It seems like whoever did this was trying to make it as difficult as possible for the police to either find her and or identify her. So if this was a random attack, then why be so concerned with that? Wouldn't you just kidnap her, assault her, and then leave her body somewhere? Investigators took the woman's fingerprints and submitted them to the FBI, hoping that they could be used to identify her.
But that really wasn't much help, because back in 1976, there wasn't much police departments could do with fingerprints because, well, there just weren't many prints in the national database. They also tried extracting some of her teeth to try and identify her. That didn't work either. Investigators combed through missing person reports from both the United States and Canada, hoping to find someone matching her description. But that was a dead end, too.
When she still remained unidentified, the police had a forensic sketch artist create a sketch of how the woman might have looked like when she was alive. The image was then circulated around different newspapers in the area, hoping that someone might recognize her and call the police. Initially, this worked. Right after the sketch was put out to the public, the police received countless promising tips,
A lot of people had called in saying that they thought they might know who the woman is as well as her unborn baby girl. But after each tip came in and the police investigated it, they were all ruled out. None of them matched. The Pennsylvania State Police then started circulating that same sketch across the country.
They had no idea at this point if she was from the area or if that's simply where she ended up. She might have actually came from a completely different state. And if that was the case, they needed to show her picture everywhere across the country. That didn't work either. Without an identity, the mystery woman became known as Beth Doe. And seven years after she and her unborn baby were discovered, they were buried in a Pennsylvania cemetery.
But although she was in the grave, the police never stopped trying to identify her or locate her killer. This became a case that really stuck with investigators for years. First was simply the age of the victim. Remember, based on the autopsy, the forensic pathologist believed that this was either a teenager or a girl no older than about 22. And that is way too young to die.
Second was the fact that she was just about to become a mother. She was nine months pregnant when she died, and her baby girl was already full term. She was just days away from giving birth. So the police wanted to know what kind of monster would target someone like this.
Then, we couldn't not talk about this. It's the sheer brutality of the murder. She had been strangled, shot, sexually assaulted. Her genitals were mutilated. And her body was dismembered and put inside suitcases. That's a crime that's hard to forget. In 2007, 31 years later, Pennsylvania state authorities decided to give the case another shot.
A lot has changed over the years, especially when it comes to DNA testing and forensics. So they hoped that in 2007, they could learn something new about the case or at least test some new evidence. So in 2007, they exhumed the woman's body to collect DNA. It was then uploaded to various missing person databases searching for a match. But there wasn't.
Now, let's be honest, this really was a long shot. Since she went missing back in the 1970s, it was extremely unlikely that her DNA would be in any type of database because this happened long before police departments started regularly collecting DNA. So there was a really slim chance that they would find a match, but still, they tried it anyway.
Since they had already exhumed her body, they created another forensic sketch of how she might have looked like if she were still alive. They even made an age-progress image to show how she would look in 2007. Once again, just like before, the images were circulated throughout the missing and exploited children's network, but no luck. Once they didn't get a hit with DNA or the new sketches, they reburied her.
She was still simply known as Beth Doe. Throughout the years, the police considered several different missing women as possibly her. The first was a woman named Iris Brown, who went missing in 1976 from Vermont. She was last seen leaving her Burlington, Vermont apartment in March, but simply vanished after that.
Iris Brown was eventually ruled out as being Beth Doe after her real killer was discovered, William John Posey Jr., but to this day, her body has never been found. 20-year-old Valerie Kousia was once considered. On May 4, 1974, Valerie met up with a female friend in New York City where they hitchhiked together to the Banana Fish nightclub.
Once they got to the club, though, they were separated. And Valerie was last seen getting into a car with two unidentified white men. Teresa Fitton could have been Beth Doe. She disappeared from Florida in 1975. Some people at the time thought that she simply ran away on her own. But others weren't so sure. She's still missing today. 16-year-old Trenny Gibson was also considered missing.
She vanished from the Great Smoky Mountains on October 9th, 1976, while on a field trip with her high school and was never seen again. 24-year-old Rory Kissinger disappeared in 1973 after she somehow managed to escape a Massachusetts jail.
Besides being considered Beth Doe, she was also ruled out as the Virginia Beach Jane Doe, Winchester Jane Doe, and Newport News Jane Doe. Anna Leatherwood was last seen on May 20, 1966 in Tennessee.
Although the police suspected her abusive husband was responsible for her disappearance, as well as her presumed murder, her body has never been found. And no one's been arrested in the case, including her husband. 17-year-old Sherry Roach from California was also once considered. She went missing from San Mateo, California in June 1976.
At the time, she was living in a group home, but left the home to take a bus to her job in nearby San Francisco. She was never seen again. Then there was 30-year-old Georgia Nolan from Kentucky. Although she was much older than Beth Doe was believed to be, she was still considered a possibility.
Georgia was last seen with her estranged husband in late November 1976 while traveling to Chicago. But she never made it and hasn't been seen since. Finally, there was Mary Robinson. 23-year-old Mary disappeared from Rochester, New York in June 1976. Although authorities suspect foul play was to blame for her disappearance, they've never been able to arrest anyone or find out where her body is.
The list of possible identities doesn't stop there. Over the years, over the decades, the police considered as many as 12 women as possibly being Beth Doe. But in one way or another, they were all eventually ruled out. By September 2019, there was a massive break in the investigation. The Pennsylvania State Police announced that they believed they had finally found Beth Doe's true identity.
16-year-old Madeline Cruz. Although they had considered at least 12 other women in the past, this one really stood out to investigators, and here's why. Madeline, who went by Maggie, was last seen in 1976 in New York after she ran away from her foster parents' house. Her last known whereabouts were when she called a friend asking for money. After that, 16-year-old Maggie was never heard from again.
One of the biggest reasons why the police considered Maggie as Beth Doe was because she had allegedly told her friend over the phone that day that she was pregnant. And this lines up perfectly with what we know because Beth Doe was nine months pregnant when she was killed. Then there was Maggie's age at the time she disappeared.
In 1976, she was 16 years old. Now, even though the forensic pathologist couldn't pinpoint an exact age for Beth Doe, he estimated in his report that she was either a teenager or in her early 20s. So this also seems to add up. Then there's the time frame. Maggie was last heard from in 1976, just a few months before Beth Doe's body was discovered.
So if Maggie decided to run away from her foster parents' house because she was pregnant, maybe she would have been able to survive on her own for a couple of months, but then was eventually kidnapped and killed. The police heard about Maggie after someone who went to school with her submitted a tip to them. And when they saw the sketch that was created of her years later, she thought the girl looked exactly like her friend.
So for about the next four weeks, the police really thought they had finally identified Beth Doe, Maggie Cruz. But by the end of September, they did a complete 180 and announced that they were wrong. She wasn't Beth Doe. Here's why. After a little digging, they discovered that Maggie Cruz was, quote, alive and well. Madeline Cruz was just another letdown in a string of many for law enforcement.
By the end of 2019, they had done pretty much everything and anything they possibly could to identify her. They took fingerprints. They searched missing person databases. They created countless forensic sketches. They even exhumed her body and tried basic DNA testing. But there was still one thing they hadn't tried yet. Forensic genetic genealogy.
In November 2020, investigators went back to the DNA sample that was collected from Beth Doe in 2007. Although it had been over four decades, they were hopeful the sample still contained usable DNA. Law enforcement decided to reach out to the private Texas-based lab, OTHRIM, a lab that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
Over the years, this particular lab has become famous across the true crime community for their ability to solve old cold cases just like Beth Doe. And not only are they identifying John and Jane Does, usually through old and degraded DNA samples, but they are also helping to catch killers through the same type of technology.
So once law enforcement decided to use Othram in the case, the first step was to secure the financial funding. Unfortunately, this type of advanced DNA testing isn't cheap. On average, a Jane or John Doe case just like this can cost anywhere from $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, and sometimes even a lot more than that.
So before Othram could really do anything with the DNA, they needed to make sure they had the money. Once they got it, the Pennsylvania State Police sent a piece of the girl's femur bone to Othram in Texas. And alongside the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Othram extracted a small amount of DNA from the femur bone.
Once they had the DNA, they combined their forensic-grade genome sequencing and proprietary enrichment to create a genealogical profile of Beth Doe. But this is where Othram encountered their first big obstacle. Now, the problem wasn't that there wasn't enough DNA in the sample. The problem was how badly the DNA sample had been degraded over the years.
Remember, it had been over four decades, so the DNA that was left was severely degraded as well as contaminated with several different strands of bacteria. But if any private lab can still test contaminated and degraded DNA, it's Othram. Fortunately, using specialized tools created by Othram, they were able to create a usable genealogical profile of Beth Doe.
And after they had the profile, they turned it over to another genealogical research agency, DNA Labs International. DNA Labs International was able to identify a top match in a genealogical database with over 1,700 centimorgans of shared DNA. And through investigative work by the Pennsylvania State Police, they identified one particular relative of Beth Doe.
Louis Colon Jr., Beth Doe's nephew. The next step was to track down and talk with Louis Colon Jr. If he could provide some type of proof that Beth Doe was in fact his aunt, and they could directly compare their DNA, they might finally have a match. The Pennsylvania State Police got to work on tracking down Louis Colon Jr.,
When they found him, he confirmed with investigators that his father's sister, Evelyn Colon, had not been heard from since the mid-1970s. This confirmed that the four decades old cold case, the case of Beth Doe, was actually Evelyn Colon.
Investigators learned that Lewis Colon Jr. had actually already uploaded his DNA to a genetic database years earlier, hoping to reconnect with Evelyn. As soon as he learned that she had been missing for years, he wanted to see if he could track her down. And what better way to do that than by uploading his DNA to several databases to see if he could get a hit?
He knew that when she went missing, she was 15 years old, pregnant, and living with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Luis Sierra. He knew that his aunt had eventually stopped keeping in touch with the family. Apparently, a letter written by her boyfriend, Luis Sierra, was sent to Evelyn's family saying that she had given birth to the baby and that everything was fine.
According to the letter, they would get in touch with them soon and the family could come meet the baby. But that's when the communication stopped and Evelyn's family never heard from her again or her boyfriend, Luis Sierra. By uploading his DNA to different databases, Luis Colon Jr. hoped that he would find out where his aunt was because, as the letter said, he assumed she was alive and raising her baby somewhere.
But that's obviously not what happened. In 1976, Evelyn Colon was only 15 years old. After her parents found out she was pregnant, her parents allowed her to move in with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Luis. Evelyn's parents knew Luis because he had once lived in an apartment next door. One day after she moved in, Evelyn reportedly called her mom and told her she wasn't feeling well, probably because of the pregnancy.
But Evelyn wasn't there when Evelyn's mom went over to her and Luis's apartment to check on her and bring over some soup. Evelyn's mom then knocked on one of the neighbor's doors and discovered that her daughter and her boyfriend had moved out and they weren't living there anymore. Fast forward to January 1977. Evelyn's family received a letter written in Spanish saying that she had given birth to the baby and that everything was fine.
The letter had been stamped in Connecticut and said that they would be in touch soon so that the family could come meet the baby. Initially, Evelyn's family assumed she was safe and living with her boyfriend and new baby. So that's why they didn't report her missing at the time. But after a few years went by and they still hadn't heard from Evelyn, they started to worry.
According to the family, they tried going to the police to report her missing, but because of the letter, they wouldn't accept the case. The police said the letter served as proof that she was alive and well, so they wouldn't consider her a missing person. And they never looked for her. Once the Pennsylvania State Police had finally identified Beth Doe as Evelyn Colon, they turned their attention to her then-boyfriend, Luis Sierra.
They were able to track him down in New York, and by this point, he was 63 years old. According to the police, he initially denied even knowing Evelyn, but later admitted that he not only knew her, but had dated her and had a child with her. He then reportedly told investigators that he last saw Evelyn in their apartment in Jersey City before leaving for work.
But when he got home from work, he said Evelyn was gone and he never heard from her since. But the police weren't buying this story. When they asked him why he didn't report her missing or anything, he didn't seem to have an answer for that. And when they asked him about the letter that was written after she died and was mailed to her family, he didn't have an answer for that either. Luis Sierra was arrested in connection with Evelyn's murder and extradited back to Pennsylvania.
He then made his first court appearance on April 28, 2021, but he wouldn't be in custody long. He was granted a $250,000 bond, and the judge allowed him to go home while he awaited trial. This decision completely devastated Evelyn's family, who wholeheartedly believed he was responsible.
As of today, Luis Sierra has been charged with one count of first-degree murder for killing Evelyn Colon over four decades ago. But it's unclear when and how the case will be resolved because no trial date has been set. Since Luis Sierra has denied killing Evelyn, very little is known about her death except for how her body was discovered. And that's not something that should happen to any pregnant teenage girl.
After 45 years, Beth Doe was finally identified as Evelyn Colon through forensic genetic genealogy. Although both of Evelyn's parents have since passed away before she could be identified, her brother, Luis Colon Jr., now has a grave to visit his sister at, and a tiny amount of closure, if there is such a thing, as to what happened to his teenage sister.
Since this is a recent case, I'll monitor it for any updates. If there is an update to Luis Sierra's trial date, I'll bring it to you in a future episode of the show or on our Patreon page. It's also important to remember, Evelyn's then-boyfriend is still considered innocent until proven guilty. But let's be honest, at this point, it doesn't look good for him.
If you'd like to help solve cases just like Evelyn's, consider donating to genealogical research companies like Authrem. To learn more about how you can help, visit DNAsolves.com. You can also consider donating to a local private lab near you or contribute your own DNA to the database so that it can be used to help identify John and Jane Doe's.
or help identify suspects in criminal cases. To share your thoughts on this week's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode.
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Not all stories have happy endings.