Loudoun County eyes push for changes after exhumed ‘Jane Doe’ cannot be reburied



PURCELLVILLE, Va. (DC News Now) — A young, unidentified Black woman who was killed more than 50 years ago in Loudoun County was dug up in 2023 because new DNA technology could help give her name back.

But while that process continues, a legal loophole is preventing her from being buried again.

For the past year, forensics experts have been trying to answer a question that has been unanswered for more than five decades: who is the Jane Doe killed in Loudoun County in 1973?

“Obviously DNA technology didn’t exist so there is no direct match DNA that’s possible,” said Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Col. Christopher Sawyer. “So it requires going through family trees and trying to build the genealogy back.”

Sawyer said that could take a while, but in the meantime, Jane Doe is stuck at the medical examiner’s office in Manassas.

Sheriff’s deputies said Virginia law prohibits them from burying an unidentified body.

“We really don’t feel like it’s the appropriate or respectful thing to do to not be able to give her the proper burial that she deserves,” Sawyer said.

The issue was raised by Loudoun County Chair Phyllis Randall at a Board of Supervisors meeting earlier this month.

“We want to be able to respectfully reinter her and we can’t,” she said.

Randall pushed for the county to advocate for a change to the law or an exception for “anybody that had previously been buried and had been exhumed for the purposes of either DNA or investigation.”

“If that person still cannot be identified, they can legally be reinterred,” she said.

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Investigators’ priority is still to crack the case. Jane Doe was a Black woman between the ages of 18-25 when she was shot to death. She was found on a farm in the Lincoln area, and for the last roughly 25 years had been buried at Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Purcellvill.

“She was murdered. That is a fact,” Sawyer said. “We would love to be able to bring that case to justice. That’s the ultimate goal. But even if we can’t do that, we also feel the right and respectful thing to do is to be able to give her her name back and give her family answers and closure.”

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office is working with a funeral home to give Jane Doe a proper burial, once it is allowed.



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