Dead teen ID'd in Lake cold case — 40 years after family mistakenly ID'd another body
A body has finally been identified as a missing Central Florida teenager — over 40 years after her family mistakenly identified another body as her, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
In December, a body found in April 1984 off a dirt road near Lake Dorr in Altoona was identified as Rebecca Sue Hill, the agency announced Wednesday in a news release. The sheriff's office said it plans to continue investigating her disappearance and death — which it views as a suspected homicide.
After multiple detectives and repeated efforts to identify Hill's remains (designated as 'Judy Doe') based off skeletal re-creations, dental records and DNA, the breakthrough in the decades-long cold case came after the agency partnered with private laboratory Othram, the news release said.
Othram specializes in forensic genetic genealogy and spent over a year working through the genealogy of 'Judy Doe,' according to the news release. Detectives contacted several potential family members identified by Othram to gather more information and samples for further genealogical testing. Eventually they got a sample from a suspected close relative who turned out to be her sister.
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The sheriff's office said Hill was reported missing from Arkansas sometime in 1981, making her 16 or 17 at the time of her disappearance. But Hill hadn't been part of a missing persons database for nearly that entire time because a family member mistakenly identified a body found in Little Rock, Arkansas, as her in 1981 or 1982.
The agency is currently looking into three other cases using forensic genetic genealogy.
The first is 'Julie Doe' who was located in Clermont in September 1988 and being investigated in conjunction with the DNA Doe Project. The second is 'Jane Doe' who was located in Sorrento in December 1991 and being investigated with Othram. The third is a sexual battery suspect from 2007 being worked with help of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Parabon Nanolabs.
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