she goes by Jane podcast

In 2013, a woman was walking her dog on a beach in Lattingtown, NY along the Long Island Sound when she found the skeletal remains of a woman. Today, this unidentified woman is known only as Lattingtown Jane Doe or Nassau County Jane Doe, and the strongest clue to her identity is the 24k gold pig necklace found with her body.

Who is she? What happened to her?

Poem reading by Erica Wong

On the night of March 19, 2004, 17-year-old Brianna Maitland left her job at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, VT. Shortly after, witnesses saw her car less than two miles away, crashed into an abandoned farmhouse. Despite this, days pass before anyone realizes that Brianna is missing.

What happened to Brianna that night and what will it take for someone to finally come forward with answers?

Poem reading by Marypat Farrell

When Mary Shotwell Little doesn’t show up for work the morning of October 15, 1965, her boss immediately knows something must be wrong. That afternoon, police find her car at the shopping center she visited the evening before with a friend. Inside the car are her groceries and a small amount of blood. What happened to Mary, and did a mysterious admirer who sent her roses at work have something to do with her disappearance?

Poem reading by Paige McKenzie.

What happens when a living person is found but unable to identify themselves? In 2004, an older woman is found living in a beach park in Honolulu, Hawaii. Diagnosed with both dementia and schizophrenia, she is unable to provide her own name. We talk about her case as well as what happens with living Does and why it’s often difficult to identify them.

This week we’re joined by award-winning mystery writer Louise Penny.

What if everything you believed about your partner wasn’t true at all? Not where they went to school. Not their job. Not even their name. That’s what happened to Girly Chew when she left her home in Malaysia and married the monster who would eventually murder her. This week, we’re joined by Raven Goodwin as we shine light on Part 1 of Girl’s story.

This week we're Joined by actor Raven Goodwin

Alien queens, evidence planting, witness threatening: just three ways in which the trials for Girly’s murder become so outlandish that the media starts to lose sight of Girly Chew and the fact that she’s still missing. In this second part to Girly’s story, we talk about what happened during the trial and what was done to try to bring Girly home to her family.

This week, we’re joined by actress Raven Goodwin. Raven Goodwin

Bigfoot took her. That’s the explanation a 43-year-old man gives after he takes 16-year-old Theresa Bier out hiking and doesn’t return with her. But despite extensive ground and air searches for the teenager, there’s little evidence about what truly happened to Theresa in 1987. 

This week we’re joined by actor Lauren Ash

As one of the most recognizable Jane Does, she was known as Buckskin Girl for 37 years, until one day, that changed. We talk about who she is and what it took to give her her name back. 

This week we’re joined by actor  

Mercedes Rose.

What happens to unidentified remains when their cases go cold? Most often, they’re held in evidence or buried. That’s not the case for three unidentified people who were found in Washington’s Pierce County in the 1970s. Instead, two were sent to a local landfill and one was lost.

This week, we’re joined by  singer-songwriter Stephanie Quayle

Who or what scares witnesses so much that many of them ask to remain anonymous when speaking to investigators? That’s what happened in the disappearance of Nahida Khatib who suddenly vanished from her home one October morning in 1976.

This week we’re joined by award-winning actress and activist Kathy Najimy

What if a serial killer has the only clues to an unidentified woman’s identity? When a serial killer on death row begins talking about his crimes, investigators are shocked to learn of the 1986 murder of a woman in Texas that indicates his killings began much earlier than they thought. Despite this confession, that woman, whose name he thinks could be Norma, remains unidentified even now.

This week, we’re joined by Emmy-Award winning Jeané Coakley.

When a teenager disappears from a movie theater in Covina, California, police initially believe she’s run away. In the decades to come, Cynthia Hernandez stays a missing person despite her remains being found just a month after her disappearance. We cover one of our rare solved cases to talk about what happened in those years and why it took so long for Cynthia to come home.

This week, we’re joined by actress Gabrielle Ruiz.

In 1992, a truck driver pulls onto an interstate turnout on I-80 in Wyoming. There, she spots the body of a woman laying face down in the snow.  The unidentified woman becomes known as Bitter Creek Betty or Rose Doe for her rose tattoo. The only clue to her identity is a tattoo artist from Tucson who remembers giving her the distinctive tattoo. In this episode we discuss what investigators have released about her, her link to another unidentified woman, and the arrest of their killer.

This week, we’re joined by Ginger Strand

Special Episode: Aimée Baker on Who Killed? Honoring the Lives of Missing Women Through their Stories and Poetry Aimee Baker, co-host of the She Goes By Jane podcast, joins Bill Huffman, host of Who Kills..?, to discuss various cases. Were they touch on the mysterious disappearance of Brianna Maitland, who went missing in 2004 in Vermont. Despite the efforts of her family and detectives, the case remains unsolved. In this episode, we also look into the complexities surrounding cases where the media coverage was lacking and were eventually forgotten. She Goes by Jane tells the stories of America's missing and unidentified women through episodes that honor women and their lives without focusing on gratuitous violence or perpetrators. 

They said they were going to go babysit, but secretly had other plans to meet up with a friend. When teenagers Cynthia and Jackie Leslie left their Mesa, Arizona home in 1974, no one was worried. After all, everyone assumed they were exactly where they said: babysitting. When they didn’t return home, though, their family was plunged into a mystery now almost 50 years old. In this episode we cover both what was reported by the media and what was contained in their over 200 page police file.

This week, we’re joined by writer Catherine McKenzie

There are more than 57 million miles of Alaskan wilderness. Between the 1970s and 1983, a serial killer used this vast expanse to hunt his victims like wild animals, knowing they could never escape.

In 1980, the skeletal remains of a young woman were found in Eklutna, Alaska. Her murderer claimed she was his first victim and may have been a topless dancer or a sex worker. He suspected she came from Kodiak, but investigators believe she may have come from California. “Eklutna Annie” is his last remaining unidentified victim.

This week, we’re joined by singer and songwriter Kelly Moneymaker.

In Ohio, a black woman’s body is found beneath a bridge and labeled Victim #8. In New York, a black woman found dead inside a storage tote will become known as Peaches for the heart shaped peach tattoo on her breast. And in Georgia, a black woman’s bones are found in the underbrush by a man walking his dog. Like many women of color who came before and after them, their stories fade from news coverage - if they’re covered at all. What is missing white woman syndrome and how does it translate to unidentified bodies cases? We explore the stories of nine unidentified black women from across the United States and spanning over seventy years in order to find out what happened and why media coverage matters.

This week, we’re joined by Wendy Williams and Beth Williams

“Got married. Leaving town. Will not be back. Don’t worry. Babe.” That’s what the telegram read that Beverly Sharpman’s parents received the night of September 11, 1947. But, according to her mother, there was one problem: Beverly wasn’t seeing anyone at the time. This, and the unanswered questions surrounding her disappearance send one mother on a decades long quest to find her daughter.

This week, we’re joined by American voice actress Susan Bennett.

On a weekend pass from a facility for pregnant and parenting teens, 15-year-old Keiosha Felix goes missing from her aunt’s home in Duson, Louisiana on April 30, 2012. Quickly labeled a runaway, it takes two months until her case is reclassified as a missing person. Despite this change, her case is plagued by small town politics, a lackluster community response, and disparities in media coverage. Still, her maternal family and a core group of volunteers keeps their hopes high that she will be found alive. 

This week, we’re joined by McKenna Rae Roberts.

When 30-year-old Pah Pow leaves her apartment, the only witness is her young son who says she left with a man he recognized but whose name he didn’t know. Her family thought she was with family, her family thought she was with friends. This mistake meant nearly a week passed before anyone realized Pah was missing. An immigrant from Thailand, Pah lived with her husband and children in Aberdeen, South Dakota. She has been missing since April 2016.

This week, we’re joined by 

Rainbow Dickerson.

Dorothy Arnold, a young socialite, vanished without a trace in 1910. Born into wealth and privilege, Dorothy's life seemed idyllic, but her family didn’t support her aspirations to become a writer nor her budding romance with a man named George Griscom Jr., both of which she kept hidden from her family. With her disappearance, a tangled web of theories emerges, including rumors of elopement, a clandestine abortion, and even suspicions of sex trafficking.

This week we’re joined by Sharon Lawrence

In southern Texas, there’s a strip of highway that runs between Houston and Galveston. From the 1970s until today, it’s a place where many women and girls have gone missing or were murdered. Most of these crimes are unsolved and this area has become known as the Texas Killing Fields. But nestled along Interstate 45 in League City, Texas, is a 25 acre field where this name originated. There, between 1984 and 1991, the bodies of four young women were found in this field. Two were identified immediately, but two more spent 30 years known only as Jane and Janet Doe until one day, that changed.

This week we’re joined by actor Briana Evigan

In 1969, 21-year-old Linda Peogeot and her daughter, Lori Mae, leave a department store with all the supplies they need to celebrate the little girl’s third birthday party happening the next day. And there, in the parking lot, they’re abducted by a man in broad daylight with witnesses just feet away. This abduction spurs a nationwide manhunt as investigators race to get Linda and Lori Mae back to safety. 

This week we’re joined by author Liz Moore.

Cleveland, 1934. A man collecting firewood along the shores of Lake Erie is startled to find the partial remains of a woman. Though investigators are able to determine that she was brutally murdered, they are unable to identify the woman, naming her the Lady of the Lake instead. What they didn’t know yet was that the next four years the Cleveland area would be terrorized by a man they called the Cleveland Torso Murderer or the Butcher of Kingsbury Run who left a wake of sadistic murders behind. Even now, 90 years later, he, along with many of the victims, have never been identified.

This week our guest reader is Dee Wallace who played the role of Mary in E.T.

McDonald County, Missouri. In 1990, a woman and her husband find the remains of a woman near an abandoned house. She’s been bound, her hands and legs tied behind her back. With no identification on her, and no one coming forward to claim her, she becomes one of America’s unidentified women and is given the name Grace Doe, because it will be only through the Grace of God that her identity will be returned to her. And, for over thirty years, that’s true. Until one day, science, and a determined detective, give her her name back.

This week we’re joined by actress Teryl Rothery. 

When he spoke of what happened to his daughter Shelley, Ed Sikes said, “It was a crash course in good and evil.” In 1986, when Shelley was 19, she was working as a waitress at a popular restaurant in Galveston. The night she disappeared, she left work and headed to her boyfriend’s house, but Shelley never made it there. Based on eyewitness accounts and, eventually, the confessions of her killers, investigators were able to piece together a pretty detailed account of what happened that night. The one thing they don’t know? Where Shelley is now.

This week our guest reader is actress Gus Birney.

In 2001, the Green River Killer was finally caught, ending one of the most horrific eras in the Pacific Northwest and ending a decades long investigation dedicated to identifying this mnan. Convicted of 49 murders, this man confessed to even more, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. It would take over twenty more years to identify three of his young victims with the most recent being identified in 2024.

This week our guest reader is actress and creative Tabitha Brownstone

On Valentine’s Day in 1991, a young woman is seen hitchhiking along US 1 in the Florida Keys. The next morning, a pair of windsurfers find her body in a densely wooded area. She’d been beaten to death before being strangled with her own bikini top. For years this young woman was known only as Valentine Doe, named for the last day she was seen alive. But investigators never give up on her case, utilizing new tactics and techniques to identify her.

This week our guest reader is Patricia Rae

On July 11, 2007, a 31-year-old Carma Purpura was last seen getting into the cab of a truck driver at a rest stop near Indianapolis. The next day, he’s arrested in Nashville under suspicion he’s involved in the murder of another woman. Inside his cab, investigators find Carma’s phone and credit card and so much of Carma’s blood detectives are certain Carma is no longer alive. Four years later, a skull along with some other remains are found in Kentucky. With few clues to go on, she becomes one of the state’s unidentified women. Even though it takes five more years to identify her as Carma, it brings some amount of resolution to her case.

This week our guest reader is comic Jann Karam

On a hot summer’s day in 1992, 63-year-old Bessie Kutnak goes to look for her missing cattle near her home in Cameron, Texas. Witnesses say she seemed disoriented and was seen asking for directions before she disappeared. When family members realized she was missing, a full-scale search of her began, but no trace of her was ever found.

This week our guest reader is actress Catherine Mary Stewart

Tot Tran Harriman survived the Vietnam War. She witnessed history when she was evacuated on the last boat out of Saigon before it fell. She lived through being held in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania along with 20,000 other refugees. And made a life for herself in Maine, raising three children, starting new businesses, and helping other refugees. But in 2001, she also became one of America’s missing women. 

This week our guest reader is actor, writer, and producer Porter Duong

Detective Lorie Howard was once told that the only way the case of the unidentified woman she was working on would be by the grace of god. This gave her the name Grace Doe and she was known by this for years until she was finally identified as Shauna Garber. A few weeks ago, investigators made public new information, filling in gaps in Shauna’s story including an update to her name and revealing what happened to her the night she was murdered. 

This week we’re joined by actress Teryl Rothery

In 1993, 16-year-old Sequoya Vargas hitchhikes with a friend to her friend’s home. Later that evening, the man who gave them a ride asks her to go to his cousin’s house to watch movies. She never returns home. Despite this being out of character for her, the police brush aside her mother’s pleas to search for her daughter, sending her family and friends on their own quest to find out what happened to Sequoya that night.

This week our guest reader Tonantzín Carmelo

In 1968, the body of a young woman was found in rural Pennsylvania. She’d been shot to death. Months later, another young woman is found just a few miles away. Their only connection? They wore the same leather sandals. It will take nearly fifty years and an online database dedicated to missing and unidentified persons to identify who they are. But even with this development in their case, their murders are still unsolved.

This week our guest reader is Kelsey Wang

In 1977, a young female hitchhiker catches a ride from a man who offers to bring her to her home. Within an hour, the man murders her and leaves her body to be found by a group of blackberry pickers a few days later. She has no identification on her. Though it’s not long before they pinpoint him as the murderer, but he doesn’t know her name. Investigators spend years trying to identify her, eventually giving her the name Precious Jane Doe in the hopes that it will help people remember her. In another case solved by investigative genetic genealogy, we highlight the case of Lisa Roberts, formerly known as Precious Jane Doe.

This week our guest reader Heather Morris

 Perhaps you’ve seen the photo before. A young woman with her hands bound, tape over her mouth, laying in the back of a van with a similarly bound little boy. This photo has, for better or worse, become synonymous with the case of Tara Calico, a 19 year old young woman who disappeared while riding her bicycle in New Mexico in 1988. But beyond that photo, many don’t know much about Tara or her disappearance. And this year, she’ll have been missing for 36 years, almost twice as long as she was alive. 

This week out guest reader is Lauren Robertson.

In 1952, a man comes across the burned body of a woman in Cottonwood Gulch, just outside of Black Hawk, Colorado. He returns to this site several times before reporting what he found to the sheriff’s office, a fact that will immediately cloud his actions in suspicion. Without any identifying information, she becomes known as Maria to some, or more often as the Pyre Case for the way she was murdered. It’s been 72 years since she was murdered, and there are questions if she will ever be identified. You see, her remains are missing.

This week our guest reader is Dedee Pfeiffer.

At 3:30am, a 13-year-old Deanna Merryfield shows up at her uncle’s trailer and wakes her twin who is sleeping inside. The two talk for just a moment before Deanna, startled by her uncle waking up, bolts. This is the last confirmed time she was seen alive. Since 1990, the year she disappeared, until now, there are a few clues that she might be out there somewhere: a collect call, a police computer search, a sighting, but are any of those proof she’s still out there? 

This week our guest reader is Alison Arngrim

On March 22, 2011, employees at Dr. Promila Mehta-Paul’s medical office arrive and get ready for another busy day of patients and appointments. There’s one problem? The Doctor never arrives. Always reliable and communicative, they know it’s unlikely that she wouldn’t have called if something came up and soon they, along with Promila’s family and friends, are flooding the local police offices with calls wondering where she is, but when police check her home, it’s clear she hadn’t been there for several days. 

This week our guest reader is Mouzam Makkar.

In December 1990, a woman accidentally drowned in the Passaic River in New Jersey. Despite these tragic circumstances, her story garners little media attention. She becomes one of the tens of thousands of individuals who are currently unidentified in the United States. Researchers call these tens of thousands of unidentified our “silent mass disaster.”

This week our guest reader is award-winning actor Crystal Balint.

New York City, September 10th, 2001. The day before the attacks on the World Trade Center is a day when most New York City residents are going about their regular business. The same was true for Dr. Sneha Philip who left her Battery Park apartment that evening to run some errands. It wasn’t unusual for her to spend the night out in the city, but when she doesn’t return home by the next day, her family knows something is wrong. The problem? With all eyes on the terrorist attacks, can they get anyone to listen?

This week our guest reader is Sakina Jaffrey

Though Dr. Sneha Philip, who lived just blocks from the World Trade Center, is last seen on September 10th, she is added to the list of 9/11 victims. That is until the NYPD starts investigating her personal history and this investigation leads to her removal. Over the years her family fights for her to be recognized as one of the victims and, in 2008, she finally is. Despite this, what one judge calls rank speculation about her, and her disappearance, continues.

This week our guest reader is Sakina Jaffrey.

In 1979 the body of a woman was found on or under a porch in North Camden, New Jersey. Years later, her skull is found in another residence. Despite this shocking find, little information is known about her. This week we try to shine light on her story and the factors that have worked against her identification. 

This week our guest reader is Shay Mack

In June 1989, Terri Maness is found murdered in her townhouse in Wichita Kansas. Over a week later and 200 miles away, Joan Butler doesn’t show up for work worrying her family and co-workers, but when they go to her apartment, she’s nowhere to be found. Initially, there’s nothing to connect these two cases, but within a week, investigators realize that they could be dealing with a serial killer.

This week our guest reader is Jackie Lee McLean

It’s June 1989 and Kansas is rocked by a series of attacks on young women. Twenty-four year old Terri Maness was found murdered in her townhouse and eleven days later 24 year old Joan Butler goes missing from her apartment. Just days after that, two roommates, Theresa Brown and Christine Rusch are abducted as well. These abductions spur a manhunt across several states and investigators search for their kidnapper in the hopes these three women can be found alive.

This week our guest reader is Jackie Lee McLean.

In 1990, a mushroom hunter finds the burned skeletal remains of woman in rural Arkansas. Due to the brutal treatment of these remains by her killer, she will become known as Bone Woman, and, less often, as Benton County Jane Doe. In 2022, Benton County authorities make a major announcement. Using investigative genetic genealogy, they were able to identify three unidentified individuals who had been found murdered in the county, including Benton County Jane Doe. Her name is Donna Nelton, and her story is haunting.

This week our guest reader is Devyn Dalton

A serial killer sends investigators a series of notes, detailing his crimes. In them, he mentions a married woman who drove a white grand am. He claims he murdered her and that investigators should be able to use his clues to identify her. There’s one problem though, investigators can’t find any missing person or murder cases that match these clues.

This week our guest reader is Tonya Todd

On the Fourth of July weekend in 1966, three young women head to Indiana Dunes State Park to enjoy the beach and swim in Lake Michigan. Despite the over 8000 other beach goers there that day, the women somehow vanish without a trace. They’re disappearances spawn many theories over the years, but none bring investigators closer to finding out what happened to Ann Miller, Patricia Blough, and Renee Bruhl that day.

This week our guest reader is Meredith Garretson

It’s 1946. Twenty-four year old Lola Celli is visiting her parents in Grandview Heights, Ohio when she decides to take a bus into Columbus to buy some nylons. But her neighbors don’t report seeing her on the morning bus nor is there any record of her making a purchase at the store she planned to visit. Is it possible that something happened to Lola in the two blocks between her parents’ home and the bus stop?  

Everyone knew Evelyn Throsby’s fifth husband wasn’t right for her. Everyone except Evelyn that is. But what they didn’t know was that he was a conman. He used his skills to isolate Evelyn from her friends and family, steal her money, and, ultimately, kill her while keeping everyone in the dark for months. Evelyn’s murder would go on to become a landmark case in what happens when prosecutors move forward with a murder trial when a victim’s body has never been located.

This week we’re joined by Nadia Hatta

In 1998, an unidentified woman’s remains are found near a highway truck stop in Weatherford, Texas. It is believed that she died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but in the past 26 years no one has come forward to claim her. Today, little has been publicized about her case, making her one of the many unidentified women whose stories aren’t told.

This week our guest reader is Kate Roman

Known to the courts as a glamor girl, 26 year old Jean Spangler was trying to make her way in Hollywood as an actress and dancer while raising her young daughter as a single mom. And then the unthinkable happens, on the night of October 7, 1949, Jean Spangler left her home telling her family she would be doing a bit part at one of the studios. She was never seen again.

This week our guest reader is Sara Tomko

Twenty-six year old Jean Spangler longed for fame and the bright lights of Hollywood. Instead she worked as a bit actor, getting uncredited roles and appearances in television and film. But when she went missing in 1949, it seemed everyone knew her name. In her disappearance, she achieved a level of fame that alluded her in life, so much so that we have forgotten much about who she was.

This week our guest reader is Sara Tomko.

 In 1928, Bessie and Glen Hyde take a scow down the Colorado River in their attempt to have Bessie become the first woman documented to have gone down the river through the canyon. Their plan is to leverage their experience into a career on the lecture and vaudeville circuit. They are last seen heading down the river in mid November. 

In 2000, model Lourdes Gruart disappears. Her brother says that she told him she was leaving for Europe for a modeling job and left their shared apartment. But Lourdes doesn’t have an active passport, nor has she told anyone else of her travel plans. In the 24 years since, Lourdes’s disappearance has remained a mystery.

 In 1937, a young college woman, Ruth Baumgardner, says good night to her friends and heads to her dorm room. That’s the last anyone sees of her. The next day her friend finds Ruth’s car key on the dorm building staircase, but Ruth is nowhere to be found. 

This week we're joined by Mallory Kennedy