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Pineville, Mo. —
Lorie Howard held her breath Monday as she opened the email attachment.
The McDonald County sheriff’s detective had been working three years on her own time to find the identity of the murdered woman she calls Grace, whose skeletal remains were found in 1990 near an abandoned farmhouse on Oscar Talley Road in McDonald County.
Now she waited at her desk as the photo sent by a forensic artist in Canada downloaded onto her computer screen. Howard desperately hoped that she would recognize from missing person files the face — Grace’s face — that she was about to see.
She didn’t.
“I wanted to know her,” Howard said. “I wanted to know as soon as I saw her who she was.”
No matter, though. Grace now has a face. And that’s more than something. It’s what will eventually solve the mystery of her killing, Howard believes.
Working off a CT scan performed by Freeman Neosho Hospital on Grace’s skull, Montreal-based forensic artist Victoria Lywood has reconstructed what the dead woman probably looked like, even down to the jean jacket she was wearing when her body was discovered more than 20 years ago. It took about two weeks.
“It’s almost exactly how I pictured her,” Howard said of Grace. “The detail is amazing.”
Grace’s bones and skull were only recently re-discovered at the University of Missouri after having been lost to Howard, who calls her Jane Doe “Grace” because people have told her it will only be by the grace of God that she will ever solve the mystery.
The photos of the forensically reconstructed face vary slightly. All show a woman in her mid-20s to early 30s with brown eyes — just a guess — and auburn hair. Based on a real hair sample taken from her remains, it is thought that Grace was probably mixed race, likely Caucasian and Native American, according to Howard.
“The lab stated her cross strands were flat, as opposed to oval,” Howard wrote in a recent e-mail.
However, in one of the photos, the hair is shorter. This is because people Howard has talked to who saw Grace’s body just after it was recovered say they recall her hair as being only about collar length.
A separate pencil sketch varies some, as well.
According to an anthropologist report and from what is left of her skeleton — which is about 60 percent — Grace is thought to have stood between 5’1” and 5’4” (other sources have her as tall as 6’3”) was of slender build, and probably weighed around 120 pounds.
Lorie Howard held her breath Monday as she opened the email attachment.
The McDonald County sheriff’s detective had been working three years on her own time to find the identity of the murdered woman she calls Grace, whose skeletal remains were found in 1990 near an abandoned farmhouse on Oscar Talley Road in McDonald County.
Now she waited at her desk as the photo sent by a forensic artist in Canada downloaded onto her computer screen. Howard desperately hoped that she would recognize from missing person files the face — Grace’s face — that she was about to see.
She didn’t.
“I wanted to know her,” Howard said. “I wanted to know as soon as I saw her who she was.”
No matter, though. Grace now has a face. And that’s more than something. It’s what will eventually solve the mystery of her killing, Howard believes.
Working off a CT scan performed by Freeman Neosho Hospital on Grace’s skull, Montreal-based forensic artist Victoria Lywood has reconstructed what the dead woman probably looked like, even down to the jean jacket she was wearing when her body was discovered more than 20 years ago. It took about two weeks.
“It’s almost exactly how I pictured her,” Howard said of Grace. “The detail is amazing.”
Grace’s bones and skull were only recently re-discovered at the University of Missouri after having been lost to Howard, who calls her Jane Doe “Grace” because people have told her it will only be by the grace of God that she will ever solve the mystery.
The photos of the forensically reconstructed face vary slightly. All show a woman in her mid-20s to early 30s with brown eyes — just a guess — and auburn hair. Based on a real hair sample taken from her remains, it is thought that Grace was probably mixed race, likely Caucasian and Native American, according to Howard.
“The lab stated her cross strands were flat, as opposed to oval,” Howard wrote in a recent e-mail.
However, in one of the photos, the hair is shorter. This is because people Howard has talked to who saw Grace’s body just after it was recovered say they recall her hair as being only about collar length.
A separate pencil sketch varies some, as well.
According to an anthropologist report and from what is left of her skeleton — which is about 60 percent — Grace is thought to have stood between 5’1” and 5’4” (other sources have her as tall as 6’3”) was of slender build, and probably weighed around 120 pounds.
Clothing recovered with her body included a blue denim jacket, white T-shirt, “Lee” brand blue jeans and size 7 ½, white “Fitness” brand high-top tennis shoes.
THE FACTS
Grace’s badly decomposed body was discovered on Dec. 2, 1990, in some weeds beside an abandoned house on Oscar Talley Road, about midway between Lanagan and Pineville.
She had apparently been hogtied with six different types of binding: Nylon rope, lead rope, coaxial cable, telephone cable, parachute cord and clothesline. Because of the way she was bound, both hands behind the back and tied to one leg and a shoelace, Howard feels that Grace was also raped before being murdered — probably by strangulation, given there are no bullet or knife wound marks or signs of blunt force trauma on the skull or other bones.
There were never any suspects and Grace has never been identified. A single blond hair not belonging to the victim was found on the body. No DNA can now be extracted from it.
Howard believes that while Grace was probably not local — or else someone should have known she was missing — her murderer very well might have been. This is based on a couple of factors, including the remoteness of the country road Grace was dumped — and likely murdered — on. No one would probably do something like that on a road they didn’t know, Howard reasons. Plus, unless the killer (or killers) just happened to come across the abandoned farmhouse Grace was found beside, its existence was already known.
Howard thinks that Grace may have been murdered at or near the same place her body was found based on a witness statement that she heard a woman scream in that proximity on Halloween night — Oct. 31, 1990 — about the same time Grace is thought to have died.
LEADS
Howard recently confirmed that the parachute cord, one of the bindings Grace was tied with, is most likely military issue and was not readily available commercially in 1990.
Also, she has been researching serial killers who were active in the area around that time, and the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department has given her information on three missing females from then as well.
Unfortunately, Howard said she doesn’t have any photos of those persons.
She is also checking into the case of another missing woman, a sheriff’s deputy from Illinois named Robin Abrams, who disappeared on Oct. 4, 1990. Though the photo does not really look like the forensic reconstruction done of Grace, and there are no dental records or available DNA, Howard is going to compare X-rays of Abrams’ femur (thigh) bone and cervical spine (neck) with Grace’s.
“As soon as I find a doctor who is willing to read them,” Howard said.
Then, last week, Howard got a call from a man in Arizona who said his mother went missing when he was 10 years old and he believed Grace was actually her, based on the description and the known facts. However, when he and his sister submitted their mitochondrial DNA to the University of North Texas and it was tested against Grace’s, there was no match.
“I was so just so very disappointed for both him and me,” Howard said. “We had both been so hopeful that Grace was his mother. He told me he isn’t giving up hope. That he has to keep searching.”
The same could be said for Howard.
HOPE FOR GRACE
Howard has been in contact with producers of the America’s Most Wanted television show who want to air the cold case. One told her on Tuesday that there are a couple of time slots available this year and that he is talking to his supervisors about it.
“His exact words to me were ‘I want to keep your momentum going,’” Howard said.
Howard said that especially since the story broke last month about her personal quest to find answers to the cold case, she has had conversations with several people who think they may have known Grace. But in the end it always turns out to be they only “really want to know her.”
And so does Howard.
“And I will,” she said. “I absolutely will.”
Anyone with any information about this case is encouraged to please call Detective Lorie Howard at 223-7430.
Correction: This article originally stated Grace Doe's bones were rediscovered at the University of Arkansas. This is incorrect. Her bones were found at the University of Missouri.
