A body found in 1994 near Indio, Calif., has been identified as Clare Dvorak. Courtesy of Othram Labs/Handout
March 1994 saw rain in the Colorado Desert near Indio, California. After the storm, hunters went out into a part of the desert off Interstate 10. There, uncovered by the rain, they found a body in a shallow grave.
The woman appeared to be in her 70s or 80s with wispy white hair; she was dressed in a pink robe and an adult diaper. No one could figure out who she was. In 2021, the cold case unit of the Riverside District Attorney’s Office submitted the woman’s DNA to Othram, a private lab that helps law enforcement with unsolved, often long-cold, homicide cases.
“Using the leads developed by forensic genetic genealogy, a follow-up investigation was launched,” Othram wrote in a statement.
Through the DNA profile, investigators were able to determine the woman’s name: Clare Dvorak. She was born in January 1907; if she was killed around the time she was found, she would have been in her late 80s when she died.
Clare Antonia Kalous was born in Chicago to German immigrant parents. (One census record, though, listed her father as a native of Slavonia, a region of modern-day Croatia.) Clare married Joseph Dvorak, also from Chicago, in 1939. They had two children, Donald and Joanne, and moved to Pinellas County, Florida, to work as farmers.
At some point, the Dvoraks moved to Arizona, where Joseph died in Scottsdale in August 1986. From there, records show Clare moved to a home on Helms Road in Desert Hot Springs, a city in the Coachella Valley. She appears to have disappeared from this home.
How and why someone killed a woman already in the twilight of her life is a perplexing mystery. It does not appear she was ever officially reported missing. When her body was found, a composite sketch was released to the public, but no one came forward with any viable leads. Her information was also entered in unidentified persons databases with no matches.
Investigators are being tight-lipped about the case. A spokesperson from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said homicide investigators declined to provide further details to “ensure the integrity of the investigation is not compromised.” The county district attorney’s office also said it would “not be taking any media requests or answering any questions regarding the case” due to the fact it is an active investigation.
Anyone with information about Clare Dvorak can contact the district attorney’s cold case unit at [email protected].
Republished courtesy of SFGate.com