By BIRIDIANA LOPEZ-RODRIGUEZ
Staff Writer
This case takes place in a small village in Cassleman, Canada on the morning of May 3rd in 1975, when a local farmer was walking around a river known as the Nation River. The river was roughly 100 yards away from the highway 417 bridge between Ottawa and Montreal. The farmer was walking along the river when he came upon an awful discovery. He came across the body of a deceased woman. She was floating face down in the water, so the police were immediately contacted. As soon as authorities arrived on the scene, the body was recovered from the water and it was clear that foul play was involved in this woman’s death. Her wrists and ankles were bound with three men’s neckties. One of the neckties was blue and gray, the second was red and white, and the third was a dark navy blue with a Canadian flag on it. Her head was also wrapped in two fringed, green cloths and underneath the two cloths, police found a tea towel. This tea towel was around her neck, and it had been used to form a makeshift ligature. Another thing wrapped around the woman’s neck was a plastic covered television cable that had gray paint splattered on it. It was determined that the cable was what was used to kill the woman; she had been strangled to death.
The television cable helped determine that she was the victim of a homicide. After examining the crime scene, as well as the area around the crime scene, police discovered traces of blood over highway 417 bridge. When the blood was tested, it was confirmed that the blood belonged to the unidentified woman. This indicated to police that she had been murdered and then the body had been thrown off the bridge and into the Nation river. It was believed that the body had been there at least a week or a month before it was found. Years later in 2005, it was suggested that she had actually been in the river since the end of summer in 1974. So, she had been in the water for 9-10 months before the farmer found her. Many sketches and reconstructions of the woman have been made over the years, including a 3D clay model. She was described as a Caucasian woman between the ages of 25 to 50, but was theorized to be around 35. She was 5’2 or 5’6 in height, she had an average build, and she weighed approximately 100 pounds. It was believed that her natural hair color was dark brown but was dyed a strawberry blonde color shortly before her death, and when she was found, she was wearing a blue bodysuit.
In an attempt to crack the case and find out who this woman was, the police appealed to the public. Early in the investigation, police did receive a tip from a store clerk in Marmara, which was between 2 and a half or 3 hours away from Cassleman where the victim was found. The store employee said that they remembered selling a Canadian necktie exactly like the one the victim had been bound with. They remembered selling the tie to a man and a woman who they believed were a couple. The witness said they couldn’t remember too much except that he was around 5’4 to 5’6 in height and around 35 years old. That also seemed to be the only lead, and no one seemed to know anything about this woman. The case went cold, and in 1987, 13 years after the woman was found, the Nation River Jane Doe was finally laid to rest and buried in a cemetery in Toronto.
Four decades later, in the summer of 2017, Jane Doe’s case was reopened by the Ontario police. This was when the 3D clay reconstruction of Doe’s face was created using advanced technology. They were hopeful that the public might come forward and finally give her a name, but there wasn’t much information about whether or not anybody did come forward. So far, about 300 missing person reports have been ruled out as being Nation River Jane Doe. It has been almost 46 years since her body had been found, and there is still no idea about who she is or what happened to her. Detectives do have her fingerprints and her DNA on file, and the DNA Doe Project is currently looking into her case.