MIAMI COUNTY, Ohio (WKRC) - A 37-year-old mystery is partly solved. Investigators in Miami County Ohio, which is north of Dayton, now know the identity of the so-called "Buckskin Girl," but they still don't know who beat and strangled her to death in 1981.
There was something about that freckled face and those pigtails that attracted online sleuths, who called the murder victim "Buckskin Girl" because of the buckskin poncho she had on when she was found on the side of the road near Troy, Ohio, in April 1981.
"Today, we're all here to tell you that 'Buckskin Girl' has been identified as Marcia [King] from Arkansas," said forensic anthropologist Dr. Beth Murray.
Marcia King was 21-years-old. She wasn't identified through dental records, fingerprints or DNA in the database CODIS, but through groundbreaking DNA technology.
"We used a stored 1981 blood sample, still liquid in a heparinized tube that had sat unrefrigerated for almost 37 years. A number of individuals had told us that we would not get DNA out of that blood because it was heparinized, and not only did we get DNA out of that blood through a private lab of their choosing, but it led to using the genealogical database to find relatives," said Dr. Murray.
Dr. Murray used the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit initiative to identify Jane and John Does. The two women from California who worked on the case are scientists.
"We were dismissed by everybody," said Margaret Press of the DNA Doe Network. "I think the biggest lesson was persistence, because a year and three months ago when we started talking about it and everyone said it couldn't be done, we'd look at each other and say, 'Why not?'"
King's mother has been waiting for her daughter to come home.
"Her mother lived in the same house for the last 37 years. She didn't change her phone number; she was hopeful that one day her daughter would return, so we've given her answers, but it's not necessarily the answer she wanted," said Chief Deputy Steve Lord with the Miami County Sheriff's Office.
After the news conference, Dr. Murray got into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, to change the "Buckskin Girl's" status to identified.
King will stay buried in Troy, but her headstone will now say "Marcia King."
Investigators now know King was in Louisville and Pittsburgh the month before she was killed in Ohio. They are hoping the identity will bring new tips to find her killer.
Tips can be called into the Miami County Sheriff's Office at 937-440-3990.
