After 36 years of anonymity as a Jane Doe discovered buried in a shallow grave near Florence Junction, Arizona, Evelyn “Dottie” Lees has been identified by the DNA Doe Project.
Born in 1898 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Lees was living in Scottsdale before her disappearance. The investigation into the circumstances of her death was handled by the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office.
At the time of the discovery of her remains in 1988, authorities estimated that the unknown woman was between 50 and 99 years old at the time of her death, but believed that she would be on the younger side of that estimate. In actuality, she was 88 or 89 years old when she died. Her father was British, and her DNA relatives were spread across a broad geographic area.
Bruce Anderson, Forensic Anthropologist with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, brought the case to the DNA Doe Project in 2023, hoping that genetic genealogy analysis of the remains would yield leads to her identity.
“I responded in 1988 to the desert clandestine grave and have been trying to get her identified for nearly 35 years,” he explained in an email to the non-profit group’s Director of Case Management.
Like many DNA Doe Project cases, the work to identify Dottie Lees was funded by donors to the non-profit, who contributed nearly $5,000 toward the lab fees and case management costs.
After bone samples from the remains were processed to produce a DNA profile uploaded to GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA.com, it took a team of expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists a matter of hours to find Lees’ branch of the family tree.
A team of nine investigative genetic genealogists worked on the case together during a weekend retreat.
“The case really started to heat up when we identified a married couple from the 19th century who shared DNA with the Doe,” said Lance Daly, team co-leader. “The Doe’s estimated year of birth was about 1900; therefore, we knew we were looking at the names of her possible grandparents.”
“Her recent British heritage meant that her DNA matches came from all over the world,” said team co-leader Matthew Waterfield. “Although they were fairly distant relatives of hers, our team quickly found connections between them, and they led us to Dottie within hours.”
The DNA Doe Project is grateful to the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, who entrusted the case to the DNA Doe Project; Astrea Forensics for extraction of DNA from bone and sample prep for whole-genome sequencing; Azenta Life Sciences for sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FTDNA for providing their databases; our generous donors who joined our mission and contributed to this case; and DDP’s dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring all our Jane and John Does home.
Republished courtesy of DDP