Blount County Jane Doe
- The Find Me Project
- Oct 6
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 8
What This Case Needs
Funding & Support Status: 20%
Our immediate goal is to secure additional support and funding to advance the next phase of this investigation. Securing additional support that allows us to achieve 50% should be sufficient. See below for what this case needs.
Enhanced forensic genealogy work will allow us to identify and verify potential familial links. These are crucial connections that could finally lead to confirming the identity of Blount County Jane Doe.
With increased support, we can also expand our open-source intelligence capabilities, collaborating more closely with local law enforcement agencies to review missing person reports from the geographic regions already identified through DNA and genealogical mapping.
Funding will enable us to leverage advanced technology, including state-of-the-art facial recognition analysis, to compare the newly rendered facial profiles against existing images in national and regional databases. Each of these steps brings us closer to giving Jane Doe her name.
Case Information
Name: Blount County Jane Doe
Date Body Found: March 25, 2003
Estimated Age Range: 17-25 Years
Location Found: Alcoa, Tennessee
Biological Sex: Female
Height: 5' 4" (estimated)
Weight: Cannot Estimate
Race / Ethnicity: Black / African American
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Unknown
Distinctive Physical Features: Extremely protruding front teeth (almost horizontal) with 2 Left Incisors missing prior to death.
Clothing & Accessories: Sleeveless T-shirt with "I Don't Need a Great Deal of Love, Just a Steady Supply" on front. Blue Fleece Jacket.
Transportation: N/A
External Link: Click Here To Open
Circumstances
On a quiet spring day in 2003, surveyors working near a creek in Blount County, Tennessee, stumbled upon something that would haunt investigators for decades. A young woman’s remains, scattered and hidden by time. She was someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s sister or friend, yet no one ever came forward to claim her. For 22 years, she has carried no name, remembered only as Blount County Jane Doe. Who was she? How did she end up here, less than a mile from the Knoxville Airport? And why, after all this time, does her story still remain untold?
This isn’t just a case about bones found in the woods. It’s a story about a life cut short, a mystery that stretches from Tennessee to New York, Chicago, and beyond. Today, we bring her voice out of the silence.
Blount County, Tennessee sits at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. A place of rolling hills, quiet farmland, and tight-knit communities. Covering more than 560 square miles, it’s a county large enough for secrets to hide, yet small enough that the people here often feel like they know one another.
At the northern edge of the county lies McGhee Tyson Airport, the main hub for air travel into Knoxville and East Tennessee. Thousands of passengers pass through its gates every day, with planes roaring overhead as part of the steady rhythm of life. Less than a mile from that constant movement, tucked beside a quiet creek, lies a patch of land that holds one of the county’s darkest mysteries.
What makes this location stand out is its accessibility. It doesn’t sit deep in the mountains or in some remote backcountry hollow. It sits right off Alcoa Highway U.S. 129, a major artery that links Knoxville, the interstate, and the airport. From I-40, drivers can exit directly onto Alcoa Highway and, within minutes, find themselves at the airport’s edge. Local connector roads like Hunt Road, William Blount Drive, and Louisville Road provide easy access to quieter stretches of woods just beyond the reach of the airport runways.
This network of roads creates a haunting contrast. On one side, constant activity, the hum of travelers coming and going. On the other, secluded patches of brush and creekside forest where someone could stop, step out, and leave something behind without drawing much notice.
And it’s here, in this place that is both highly trafficked and eerily forgotten, that the story of Blount County Jane Doe begins.
March 25th, 2003. A group of surveyors walked a stretch of wooded land in Blount County, Tennessee. The ground set aside for the early plans of a highway bypass. It was routine work, measuring and marking, until the routine shattered. In a drainage creek, scattered among the brush and water, they came across something no one expected, skeletal remains.
The area wasn’t far from Alice’s Bar, near the intersection of North Wright Road and Cusick Road. To most, this was just a quiet back lot behind a watering hole. But to investigators, it instantly became the center of a mystery. And then, three years later, more bones surfaced in the same area. Investigators believe rising and falling water levels may have shifted the remains over time, spreading them across the creek bed.
The autopsy gave them the first picture of who she might have been. An African-American woman, young, no more than 17 to 25 years old. Around five-foot-four in height. Her weight could never be pinned down, but her time of death was estimated anywhere between eight months to four years before that day in 2003. Cause of death? Unknown.
But there were other clues. Small black synthetic braids were found with her remains, likely woven into her natural hair. Her teeth told their own story. Two upper left incisors had been missing for years before her death, while the rest of her top teeth jutted forward, almost horizontal. In simple terms, she had extremely protruding front teeth. A feature impossible to miss in life, and one that might have made her recognizable.
Then there were the clothes. A blue fleece jacket. A sleeveless tank top with haunting words across the front: “I don’t need a great deal of love, just a steady supply.” Other garments suggested ties to the healthcare field. Some of the clothing could be traced back to the Chicago area, specifically Oak Lawn, Illinois.
And then, DNA. Investigators were able to isolate a profile and upload it into national databases. Surnames, possible relatives, faint threads of connection pieces that could one day lead to her name.
But here’s the question that hangs in the air. With all the advances in DNA technology, in genealogy, in artificial intelligence and digital forensics, could we finally be standing at the edge of giving this young woman back her identity?
In 2003, the idea of using DNA to identify someone through their family tree was barely on the horizon. Investigators could pull a DNA profile, upload it into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) and hope for a direct match against someone already in the criminal database. But without that match, the trail often went cold.
Fast forward to today, and the game has changed. With advances in forensic genealogy, even the smallest strands of DNA can become the key to unlocking a person’s identity. Here’s how it works. Scientists extract what’s left of the genetic material from a victim’s remains. That DNA is then digitized into a profile, which is a sequence of markers unique to that person.
Instead of looking for a direct hit in CODIS, genealogists compare that profile against massive public databases where everyday people upload their DNA for ancestry testing. From there, connections emerge. Distant cousins, a great-aunt twice removed, maybe even closer relatives. Each match becomes a dot on a family tree. The more dots investigators find, the clearer the branches of that tree become.
Genealogists then work backwards by building out family lines, checking birth records, obituaries, census data, marriage licenses, even old newspaper clippings to narrow down the possibilities. Bit by bit, the tree points inward until, finally, it leads to the one name that belongs to the unidentified person. This process has already solved dozens of cold cases across the country, giving victims back their names, and families the answers they’ve waited decades for. It’s meticulous work. It’s technical. And it’s powerful.
We’re not just talking about a mystery that’s confined to a small creek bed in Tennessee. We’re talking about family trees that branch out across entire states, across major cities, and into the lives of people who may not even realize they’re connected.
That’s where you come in. If you’re hearing these names, Jackson, Leak, Suber, Harris, Hargroves, Goins, Roach, Russell, and something stirs in your memory, don’t ignore it. Maybe it’s a family story you’ve overheard. Maybe it’s a cousin, a distant relative, or someone who simply disappeared without an explanation between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Even the smallest tip, the faintest rumor, could be the missing link that finally brings Jane Doe’s identity into focus.
Our team is actively building out a genealogy map, layering DNA results against regions and communities where these surnames are most concentrated. Places like Newport News, Virginia, Forsyth and Guilford Counties in North Carolina, Newberry County in South Carolina, and New York City boroughs like Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. These aren’t random dots on a map. These are pathways. And one of them could lead directly to her.
In the near future, we’re going to host a dedicated session focused entirely on this genealogy work. We want to bring in experts, hobbyists, even family researchers who’ve spent years tracing their own bloodlines. Together, we believe we can close the gap and, finally, restore this young woman’s identity.
When it comes to our Jane Doe, we’re faced with three possibilities. The first and perhaps the most straightforward is that she has been reported missing to law enforcement, and her name is somewhere inside a national missing persons database. That’s the best-case scenario, because it means she’s already on record, and it’s just a matter of making the right connection. The second possibility is far more troubling. It’s that she was reported missing, but the case never made it beyond the local level. That it stayed inside a sheriff’s office file cabinet, a city police log, or a small-town case report that never got uploaded nationally. In situations like that, cases fall through the cracks. And over time, they can be forgotten, except by the family who’s still waiting for answers. And the third possibility, the one that weighs the heaviest, is that Jane Doe was never reported missing at all. That there is no case number, no report, no paperwork. Only silence.
So how do we make progress in the face of those possibilities? We turn to data. With the technology we have at our disposal, we can layer databases, cross-reference records, and filter down until the patterns emerge. Here’s what that looks like. When we set the parameters for women who could fit Jane Doe’s profile, timeframe between 1999 and 2003, we initially pulled about 160 potential matches nationwide. When we refined the search further, narrowing the criteria, we landed at 72. And then, by honing in on key characteristics like age and physical description, we reduced that pool again, this time to 41.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Some of those 41 have already been flagged in earlier investigations. They were looked at, compared against Jane Doe’s profile, and ultimately ruled out. Which means our focus is sharper than ever before. From here, our internal team is going to work this list piece by piece. We’ll analyze it for integrity, clean up anomalies, and continue narrowing until the picture becomes clearer. Once that process is solid, the updated list will be added to the case blog for transparency.
Intelligence Overview
One of the first questions I had when this case was referred to me was simple, could we enhance the existing images of Jane Doe?
Right now, we have two main visuals. The first is the clay reconstruction, built directly from her skull using forensic techniques. These reconstructions are often remarkably accurate, but they still carry the limitations of the medium hard lines, neutral expressions, details left open to interpretation. Then we have an artist’s sketch, which was most likely drawn based on the clay profile itself. It’s a valuable tool, but it too is one step removed from the reality of what she may have actually looked like.
The challenge is that these two images, while helpful, don’t quite match. They give us different versions of Jane Doe, and that left me wondering, what if we could bring her to life in a way that felt more human?
So, leveraging our advanced systems, integrated with specialized plugins and enhanced rendering capabilities, that’s exactly what we set out to do. The goal wasn’t just to generate another image; it was to create a version of her that felt real, lifelike, approachable.
And there’s a reason for that. As humans, we rely on something called thin slicing. It’s our ability to make quick judgments and recognize faces based on subtle cues. And more often than not, we don’t remember a static, neutral face, we remember a smile. That single expression can trigger recognition buried deep in memory in a way no blank stare ever could.
So, we rendered Jane Doe with that in mind. We gave her warmth, we gave her presence, and yes, we gave her a smile. The results were powerful. For the first time, we weren’t just looking at a clay sculpture or a pencil sketch. We were looking at someone who felt real. Someone who could’ve been standing across from you in line at the grocery store, walking through a school hallway, or laughing with friends on a summer night. That shift in perspective is important. Because the moment Jane Doe looks like a real person, the chance that someone recognizes her increases. And recognition is the first step toward giving her back her name.
Using the clay profile as our foundation, we carefully analyzed the facial structure and characteristics, mapping every angle, every contour to generate a hyper-realistic rendering of what Jane Doe may have looked like. After a short period of time, that image came to life. It was mesmerizing.
But we didn’t stop there. We made adjustments to ensure the photo captured what the forensic record told us was unique about her, her protruding teeth. We also considered the natural variations in body composition that clay and sketches don’t always capture. So, we added slight modifications, giving her a little more weight in her face, and deepening her skin tone to reflect a richer complexion. Once we had that lifelike portrait, we took it one step further. We merged the two primary images, layering them together. A face that feels real. A face that could belong to someone you might have passed on the street, or seen in a photograph years ago.
This work excites us because it represents what technology can do when used for good. It gives voice and presence to someone who has been silent for too long. And it opens doors to what comes next. Our next step is leveraging facial recognition. We want to run these images against databases of photographs, both of known missing persons from that 1999–2003 window, and of unidentified but archived photos that may exist. One positive match could blow this case wide open.
But here’s the truth, we can’t do this alone. That’s where you come in. We need people who will read the blog, listen to the podcast, watch the short videos, and share them. If anything you hear sounds like it could connect, no matter how small, reach out. If you want to do more, we welcome you. If you have skills in genealogy, profiling, or OSINT, we want you on our team. If you’re comfortable digging into records, analyzing data, or connecting dots, there’s a place for you here. Maybe you’re not a researcher, but you’re a diver. Join us during a sonar search or dive recovery. Maybe you’re a drone operator, we could use your eyes in the sky. If you’re someone looking for purpose, for a mission that matters, then we invite you to make this mission yours.
Findings
Pending Completion
Case Contact Information
Case Contact Entity: Alcoa Police Department
Case Contact Name: Kris Sanders, Sergeant
Case Contact Info: (865) 380-4964
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