Credit: DDP
Fourteen years after her remains were discovered in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, a Jane Doe known as Ms. Startex has been identified as Jolene Lynn White. White was born in New York in 1976 but had been living in the nearby town of Cowpens when she disappeared in 2005, six years before her body was found.
On Oct. 26, 2011, a group of teenagers searching for scrap metal found skeletal human remains in a wooded area along a highway in Startex, South Carolina. Authorities determined that the remains belonged to a 40-55 year-old Caucasian woman and investigators found evidence that she had been murdered before her body was hidden under debris.
In 2020, the Spartanburg County Coroner’s Office brought the case to the DNA Doe Project, whose expert volunteer investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify Jane and John Does. A DNA profile was generated from the woman’s remains and uploaded to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, but the team immediately ran into challenges. Ms. Startex only had distant DNA matches but it was obvious that she had roots in Puerto Rico, where endogamy can complicate genetic genealogy research.
“The genealogy in this case was very complex,” said team leader Rebecca Somerhalder. “Our team built out family trees for hundreds of Puerto Rican DNA matches, but figuring out how they were connected to Ms. Startex was tricky because they were all very distant relatives.”
Over years of research, the team on this case built out a family tree for the unidentified woman that grew to contain nearly 50,000 people. Then, in April 2025, a new DNA match appeared on FamilyTreeDNA. Before long, the team had identified the biological parents of Ms. Startex as a couple from Orange County, New York. The father, as expected, was originally from Puerto Rico, while the mother had deep roots in the area.
However, none of their known children were missing and it became clear that Ms. Startex must’ve been adopted. Investigators spoke with the family and discovered that, after the death of their mother, two of the children had been adopted by a family who later moved to South Carolina. Upon speaking with their adoptive family, they learned that one of them - Jolene Lynn White - had been missing for two decades. Follow up DNA testing confirmed that Jolene was, in fact, the woman formerly known only as Ms. Startex.
“This identification was only possible because of a dedicated and collaborative team,” said researcher Janel Daniels. “It also goes to show that one DNA match can make a huge difference - anyone who uploads their DNA to GEDmatch.com, DNAJustice.org or FamilyTreeDNA.com might help solve a cold case without even realizing.”
The DNA Doe Project is grateful to the groups and individuals who helped solve this case: the Spartanburg County Coroner’s Office, who entrusted the case to the DNA Doe Project; Astrea Forensics for DNA extraction; HudsonAlpha Discovery for sequencing; Kevin Lord for bioinformatics; GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA for providing their databases; our generous donors who joined our mission and contributed to this case; and the DNA Doe Project’s dedicated teams of volunteer investigative genetic genealogists who work tirelessly to bring all our Jane and John Does home.
Republished courtesy of DNA Doe Project