The Girl Next Door
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Jan. 5, 2006
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to
create this bust of Jane Doe. (CBS) |
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(CBS) A teenager is found murdered in a relatively
peaceful area of northern California, her body dumped
behind a restaurant. A search for the victim's identity
comes up empty but police won't give up in their quest
to give the girl her name back.
Will a forensic reconstruction of the victim's face lead
investigators to a much-needed breakthrough?
48 Hours correspondent Harold Dow reports.
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“It haunts me a lot. I think it haunts everybody that
has worked on this case,” says Sgt. Scott Dudek of the
Alameda County Sheriff's office.
Like any good homicide detective, Sgt. Dudek can
sometimes get a little obsessed with his cases. But
there’s one case that troubles him more than any other.
A 22-year veteran of the Alameda County Sheriff’s
department in northern California, Dudek had solved his
share of gruesome crimes. But murders are rare in the
suburban community of Castro Valley.
“It’s a beautiful community. It’s about 75,000 people,
middle- to upper middle-class mostly. Not a lot of
crime; not a lot of violent crime especially,” Sgt.
Dudek explains.
So what he saw the night of May 1, 2003, was especially
shocking, even to a seasoned detective: the body of a
young girl, murdered, stuffed into a trash bag, and
discarded behind a restaurant.
The body was left behind a tree by a cyclone fence. "She
had been dead for about 10 days so it was fairly well
decomposed," says Dudek.
And the way she died, with a rag in her throat, suggests
someone may have wanted to silence her.
Asked if he thought she may have seen something, Dudek
says, "There had to be something very, very terrible,
obviously that went on for her ultimately to be killed.
But maybe she was a witness to something.”
There was an unknown killer on the loose and police
needed to find him. But first they had to identify the
young girl who lay unclaimed at the morgue. Without
knowing her identity, it would be impossible to find out
who wanted her dead or why.
What usually happens when police find an unidentified
murder victim?
"Normally, for us, within the first 24 to 48 hours we
know who they are either by looking at missing persons
reports or having a parent contact us,” says Dudek.
But sadly, no one seemed to be looking for her. Because
her body was so badly decomposed, a local artist did the
best she could to give her a face. They also gave her a
name: "Jane Doe." Police had to rely on her autopsy for
other clues.
Police got ten perfect prints off both her hands.
Investigators guessed the girl, 5'1" and 110 lbs., was
in her early teens, in good health, and with perfect
teeth. This Jane had all the appearances of a typical
teenage girl next-door, from her painted nails to her
choice of clothing.
“We had a seamstress redo the exact clothing that she
was wearing. We found out it’s a Tommy Hilfiger knockoff
shirt," explains Dudek. "And this is a teenager’s
outfit, it’s very common. This is what all the kids were
wearing.”
Sgt. Dudek released a sketch, hopeful it was good enough
for someone to recognize this girl, once it was splashed
all over the local media and posted on Web sites
dedicated to finding missing children.
“With this sketch being released, we probably had 150
possible clues or sightings of people that thought they
knew who our Castro Valley Jane Doe was,” remembers
Dudek.
One clue seemed so promising that Dudek and his partner,
Ed Chicoine, followed it all the way down to the
Texas-Mexican border, where they collected DNA samples
from several mothers of missing teenage girls, including
a girl whose picture bore a remarkable resemblance to
Jane.
“And every single one of those were checked out and it
wasn’t her,” says Dudek.
The Girl Next
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to
create this bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
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(CBS)
As the weeks turned to months, no one came forward to
claim this young girl, but the people of Castro Valley
began to feel a connection.
“The whole community in this area has adopted her. She’s
known as Castro Valley’s Jane Doe,” says Dudek.
And perhaps no one was touched more than Dave Woolworth,
a local landscaper. “Sometimes you’ll catch me out here
talking to her,” says Woolworth.
Best known around town for his signature tie-dyed
T-shirts, Woolworth was an unlikely hero. But the case
of this unclaimed child turned him into one.
“It was eating at me. When I read the story, I started
crying. And I looked at my wife and I told her, this
girl will never be identified. No one will come and
claim her,” he says.
Once the forensic investigation was completed Jane was
destined for cremation. But that was unacceptable to
Woolworth, himself a father who had once been estranged
from his own daughter.
Woolworth decided to take the lead in raising donations
and four months after her body was abandoned in a
parking lot, Castro Valley’s adopted daughter was given
a funeral befitting a dignitary.
As several more months went by, this child was still
nameless and her killer, faceless. But the community
that adopted her in death refused to give up hope.
"For the past two years, everything pertaining to her
I’ve saved. This way, when the mother comes forward or
is found, it belongs to her,” says Woolworth.
Even after dozens of dead ends, Scott Dudek remained
determined.
Then investigators got a clue: an anonymous letter in
the mail.
The letter writer claimed to have seen someone get
“something from the trunk” of a car and dump it into the
very same bushes where the body was found.
"We asked this person to come forward and we would keep
him anonymous," says Dudek. "However unfortunately he
chose not to come forward at that point.”
This potential witness admitted in the letter that he
was reluctant to come forward because he himself had
been in that parking lot “waiting for a married
girlfriend.”
Dudek says the person is a huge witness. "He’s got to
make the decision and do the right thing.”
Dudek’s frustration was mounting. “I’m a father;
everybody that works on this case is a father. It just
pulls at you every single day as far as why can’t we
just solve this?”
So he made perhaps the most difficult decision of his
career: to exhume the young girl’s body and search for
clues that forensic investigators might have missed the
first time around.
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this. I can’t
believe we’re at this stage in the investigation where
we have to go to such extreme measures,” says Dudek,
speaking about the exhumation.
The Girl Next
Door
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Jan. 5, 2006
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to
create this bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
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(CBS)
Dudek has assembled a team of forensic experts,
including anthropologist Allison Galloway, who will
examine Jane’s bones for clues that could provide a
better estimate of her age.
“The bones all suggest she’s pretty much finished
growing; I think she’s probably much more, say like 14
to 17,” says Galloway.
In another attempt to pinpoint Jane’s age, Dudek has
turned to Dr. Duane Spencer, a dentist and forensic
specialist.
“This is the dental X-rays now of the maxilla and
mandible of Jane Doe. Her wisdom tooth is just starting
to get its roots," says Dr. Spencer.
Comparing her X-rays to some his other teenage patients,
Dr. Spencer says he is comfortable saying Jane Doe is in
the age range of 14 to 17.
But Dudek believes the most important key to unlocking
this mystery is to get a better picture of what Jane
looked like alive and for that, he calls in forensic
artist Gloria Nusse, who will make a sculpture of Jane
based on her bone structure.
Nusse and Dr. Galloway studied Jane’s skull for clues to
the girl’s facial features. It’s part science, part
guesswork.
How can she reconstruct a person's face based on a
skull?
"Well the information is in the bone," she explains. "It
tells me that the width of the cheekbones is this; it
tells me that you know, the slope of the forehead is
this. Every skull is absolutely unique but the landmarks
are the same."
But Nusse also needs a sense of Jane’s ethnic background
to create a sculpture that will hopefully resemble the
dead girl closely enough for someone out there to
recognize her.
"Most of the features we’re seeing are European. But
there are some features that suggest that she might have
either Asian or Native American background,” says
Galloway.
The first step is to make a mold of the skull, so Jane’s
body can be returned to the cemetery in the morning.
Nusse will work all night long to make it.
She’ll then bring the mold to her studio where she’ll
work on it for weeks to bring Jane to life.
“The next part is the fun part; putting the clay on; and
finding her face; what she looks like,” explains Nusse.
"These little markers are showing the depth of tissue at
these specific points on the skull."
Those markers tell Nusse how thick the clay should be
over different parts of the face, to get an accurate and
lifelike shape.
“I’m going to put on her mouth. I know the measurement;
the width of her lips because I measured that on her
skull," says Nusse. "I just want to try to make her look
like a person. I can see a sly little smile, there’s a
softness to her eyes. All that she’s been through, this
is her chance, and it just needs to be absolutely
perfect.”
Five weeks after the exhumation and after some 40 hours
of work, Gloria Nusse is putting the final touches on
the forensic reconstruction.
When the sculpture was finished, Sgt. Dudek was
convinced he’s one giant step closer to finding out
Jane’s real name and the identity of her killer. "This
looks like a human being. She’s done such a fantastic,
wonderful job,” he says.
The sculpture of Jane Doe was revealed to the public in
August 2005 at a press conference, and Sgt. Scott Dudek
has never been so optimistic.
He was also spreading the word to detectives from other
police agencies, reaching out to more than 200 agencies.
But he's also relying on arm-chair detectives like Ellen
Leach, a Home Depot cashier from Mississippi.
The Girl Next Door
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to create this
bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
(CBS)
Ellen Leach belongs to the DOE Network, a group of
amateur gum shoes from all over the country who scour
the Internet with one mission.
"A group of 500 people. We’re dedicated to helping law
enforcement solve cold cases," explains Leach.
"Searching for missing persons and unidentified persons
and matching them up."
Ellen will try to match Jane's sculpture with reports of
missing kids from around the world in hopes of reuniting
Jane with her family.
"We have so many unidentified out there. They need their
name back. Their families need to know what happened to
them," says Leach.
But there's another case Leach is anxious to solve,
where the family's anguish has haunted her for more than
a year. It's the case of Greg May, a father of two who
one day seemed to vanish into thin air.
Why was she intrigued by the case?
"He seemed like somebody that was decent, somebody I
wanted to try to find," says Leach.
As it turns out, the case of Greg May and Jane Doe would
echo each other in ways no one could imagine. Each case
would rely on forensic reconstruction to solve the
mystery.
Forensic artist Frank Bender would travel down the same
road as Gloria Nusse to try to solve the case of Greg
May.
That case starts in Bellevue, Iowa, a historic, small
town along the Mississippi River, where Greg May was an
antique dealer with a passion for Civil War memorabilia.
Although his children, Don and Shannon, settled in
California, the three made sure to always keep in touch.
"Always, we were a close family. Even with the distances
between us," says Don May.
So it was strange when weeks went by and they hadn’t
heard from their father.
"The more we reached out, the more we were realizing
that nobody had heard from him. And he just wasn't
turning up," says Don.
May's children then discovered their father’s house was
empty and his phone had been disconnected.
Don and Shannon notified Bellevue police. Three months
into the investigation, the first disturbing clue
surfaced, when Greg May's car was discovered 141 miles
away in a parking lot in Illinois. Greg May’s wallet was
found inside.
Days later, Don May received more ominous news. His
father’s antiques were being sold at auction.
"A friend of my father's gave me a call one day and said
that he had a catalogue from an auction house and some
of the items on the flyer appeared to be my father's,"
Don remembers.
The auction house led police to Flagstaff, Ariz., where
they found Doug DeBruin and his girlfriend Julie Miller.
They were selling May’s collection and insisting it was
theirs. Police arrested them on the spot.
DeBruin had been Greg May's longtime friend and
housemate who helped Greg buy and sell antiques.
"I knew him as a hanger-on at my dad's place of
business. And he just seemed to idolize my father," says
Shannon.
DeBruin told police, last he knew, Greg May was heading
to Illinois.
But Julie Miller told investigators a completely
different story. She dropped a bombshell, saying Greg
May was dead and DeBruin killed him. Miller insisted it
was an accident, the result of a fist fight. She also
told police she had no idea what DeBruin did with the
body. But to investigators, the writing was on the wall.
This was no accident. This was murder.
The Girl Next Door
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Jan. 5, 2006
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to create this
bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
(CBS)
Detectives informed Don and Shannon that their father
Greg wasn’t coming home.
But why would Doug DeBruin want to kill Greg May?
According to police, the motivation was Greg May’s
antique collection, worth a quarter of a million
dollars. DeBruin was seen at a flea market, selling off
everything his old friend once owned.
"To see my father's property surrounded by him and him
giving it away practically. It's hard to see that
picture," says Don May.
For prosecutor John Kies, proving Doug DeBruin committed
the murder wasn't going to be easy. Although police did
find a small trace of May's blood on DeBruin's jacket,
the rest of the case was thin.
"Most of what we had at this point was circumstantial
evidence. That Doug DeBruin got caught with Greg May's
goods. That no one had heard from Gregory May," says
Kies. "And that his car and wallet were abandoned in
Aurora, Ill."
But what troubled Kies most was that he couldn't even
prove Greg May was dead.
"The defense was going to come back with, 'How did you
know he just didn't disappear somewhere? And if you
believe he's dead, how do you know he was murdered?'
That was a big burden that we had to overcome," says
Kies.
What Kies didn't know was that, seven months after Greg
May's disappearance, a clue was found hundreds of miles
from Bellevue. It was a clue that would test the talents
of forensic artist Frank Bender and help solve the
mystery of what happened to Greg May.
After finding out their father was dead and that his
one-time friend Doug DeBruin was suspected of killing
him, Don and Shannon May traveled half way across the
country to Iowa to search for their father’s body.
Where DeBruin might have left Greg May’s body was
anyone’s guess. And DeBruin wasn’t talking.
So Don and Shannon blanketed the area with flyers. They
offered a $15,000 reward, hoping someone could lead them
to their father’s body.
Why didn't they just let the police handle it?
"We needed to feel like we were doing something, doing
everything we could," says Don.
But what Don and Shannon didn't know was that the
remains of their father had already been found, 400
miles away in Kearney, Miss.
To Kearney Det. Tom O’Leary, the discovery was as
mysterious as it was chilling: a skull, left at a truck
stop, imbedded in a block of concrete. O’Leary had no
idea it was Greg May’s.
"We’ve never worked a case like this. We started our
investigation with only, you know, a human skull. No
identity, no nothing," says O'Leary.
So just as Scott Dudek had done in Castro Valley,
Calif., Detective O’Leary turned to facial
reconstruction.
"People are pretty visual. I thought, you know, we’d
have a better chance of identifying the victim if you
could actually put a face to him," says O'Leary.
Detective O’Leary called on Philadelphia artist Frank
Bender, who in his spare time helps solve crime.
"Oh I call myself the re-composer of the decomposed in
the classical fashion," says Bender, who has worked with
law enforcement on more than 40 cases, sculpting faces
from skulls of the unknown.
"When you start looking at the forms of the skull, you
start to just get a feel for what the person looks
like," says Bender.
What did this particular skull tell him? "That the
individual was middle aged. A little on the heavy side.
Balding. I just went with that feeling," says Bender,
who created a bust. "I just felt that eventually he
would be identified."
Tom O’Leary was just as confident.
"The reconstruction sat on my file cabinet. He stared me
in the face when I walked in the morning. He’s the last
person I saw when I went home at night" he says. "One
day, you know, the right lead would come in."
Little did Det. O’Leary know that the right lead would
come from Mississippi, from Ellen Leach, the Home Depot
cashier and DOE Network volunteer.
The Girl Next Door
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to create this
bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
(CBS)
Ellen Leach had matched the sculpture to Greg May’s
missing person’s photo.
After dental records confirmed the skull was in fact
Greg May’s, police notified Don and Shannon that their
father had at last been found. But the news provided
little relief.
"I asked him, 'How were the remains found, in what
condition?' And he said, 'Are you sure you want to
know?'" remembers Don.
For Don and Shannon, the sculpture has become a memorial
of sorts to their father.
"When you really study it, you see a lot of the features
are there, the ears strike me the most. The jaw line,
the forehead, the hair, the lips," says Don.
That sculpture was an answer to their prayers and helped
to prove their father was murdered.
The next step was to bring Greg May's killer to justice.
Back in Castro Valley, Calif., would another sculpture
help bring justice for the girl they call Jane?
“This work has been done and hopefully it’s enough that
somebody will come forward that knew her,” says sculptor
Gloria Nusse.
But her identity is only one part of the mystery. Why,
after two years, has no one claimed her? Detectives have
a theory: that someone out there knows exactly who she
is and what happened to her but the person is too afraid
to come forward.
So police have been keeping an eye on her grave to see
who might be drawn to visit her. And one day it paid
off: they found an intriguing clue.
A necklace and a note were found on Jane Doe's
headstone. "The note was actually strung through the
necklace, so it was attached to it. 'God loves you, it’s
OK, baby girl, Jim is paying for what he did to you,'"
says Dudek.
Sgt. Dudek hopes that DNA and fingerprint tests on those
items will provide some answers. But it will take weeks,
perhaps months, to find a match and he doesn’t want to
waste any time.
So he’s releasing new posters based on the sculpture of
Jane.
“We’ll go out to the businesses and get it out to the
people and just make sure that our Jane Doe stays in
everybody’s mind,” says Dudek.
That’s certainly true for amateur sleuth Ellen Leach,
who spent hour after hour of her own time, sifting
through reports of missing teens in search of a match.
Then late one night, the features of one little girl
from California began to line up with Jane’s.
"I like the way the face is shaped around the chin. It
looks like she’s got a good smile to her,” says Leach.
"She looks like a beautiful little girl.”
Ellen has a gut feeling about this one: but only time
will tell if she’ll have the same success as she did for
the case of Greg May.
The Girl Next Door
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It took sculptor Gloria Nusse five weeks to create this
bust of Jane Doe. (CBS)
(CBS)
With Greg May’s skull now identified, prosecutor John
Kies finally had the evidence he needed to take May’s
killer, Doug DeBruin, to trial.
"The chances of him getting away with this now were
almost negligible," says Kies.
But Kies wanted to make sure his case was iron clad. So
he offered Doug DeBruin’s girlfriend, Julie Miller,
immunity. In return, Miller agreed to testify against
DeBruin.
"The prosecutors feel that they had to make a deal with
the devil, so to speak, in order to prosecute DeBruin,"
says Don May.
Miller confessed that DeBruin had strangled May.
Together they dismembered his body. Then they scattered
him across 400 miles of the Midwest.
Miller had given just enough detail for Don and Shannon
to know where to search for their father. Volunteers
helped them in the solemn task of sifting through leaves
and debris.
But it was Don himself who ultimately found what he and
his sister had spent four years looking for: a fragment
of their father’s remains.
"This is where people put their trash. My father wasn’t
trash," his sister Shannon tearfully adds. "He was a
human being. Part of this makes me really angry and I’m
still angry today. Because I know there are remains out
here that will never be found."
At Doug DeBruin’s murder trial, the jury took under an
hour to come back with its verdict, finding him guilty.
"I remember the May family, literally crying with joy.
Don May hugging me. Shannon May hugging me. It felt
pretty good," says Kies.
Prosecutor Kies suspects Julie Miller knew DeBruin
planned to kill Greg May and did nothing to stop him.
Don and Shannon hold out hope that despite Miller’s
immunity, Kies will somehow find a way to bring her to
justice.
"I’m not gonna stop. I’m not gonna forget. I’m not gonna
go away. I don’t care what the legal system says right
now about not prosecuting you, you’re gonna get
prosecuted at some point, count on it," says Don.
Until then, they can find some peace of mind knowing
their father has at long last been laid to rest. It's
peace of mind that would not have been possible without
Frank Bender and his sculpture.
Does Bender have any words of wisdom for Jane Doe's
investigators in Castro Valley, Calif.?
"These things take time," says Bender. "It’s sort off
like fishing. You have to just leave that line out until
you get a nibble."
Sgt. Dudek is still desperate to get that nibble. “You
got a little girl out there that every single night her
mom and dad must wonder when she’s coming home,” he
says.
Ellen Leach’s lead, a young girl missing since 2001,
seemed promising.
"We were very hopeful that it was going to be our little
Jane Doe. We requested the dental records on this little
girl,” recalls Dudek.
But this girl’s dental records do not match Jane’s
perfect teeth. It’s another dead end.
So Dudek is back to square one, manning the phones, and
waiting for DNA tests on the necklace left on Jane’s
grave. This is one mystery he is determined to solve –
for the young girl who lost her life and the people like
Dave Woolworth who have forever taken her to heart.
"We’ve never lost hope in this and we’ll never lose hope
in this," says Dudek. “Sooner or later, somebody’s going
to make a connection and they will pick up the phone and
they’ll call us and they’ll do the right thing.”
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