'Jane Doe' Homicide Victim Identified After 26 Years

King County officials say they've finally identified a woman who was found shot to death 26 years ago.

The woman was found in October of 1989 behind a freight terminal on Airport Way. The woman, who did not have any identification, had been shot in the torso, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

DNA matching didn't exist at the time, so officials had few options when it came to identifying the woman.

"In the early 2000s, we worked with Natalie Murray, a forensic artist, to create a facial reconstruction of the decedent. The result showed a woman with a long face and missing teeth replaced with a partial dental plate," Dr. Kathy Taylor said on a King County Public Health website.

County officials released a sketch of the Jane Doe, but no one came forward to identify the victim, according to Taylor.

More than a decade after police found the woman, officials were finally able to perform a DNA extraction from her bones. They entered the DNA profile into an FBI database, but Taylor said they still didn't get any hits.

Twenty five years after the original discovery, the King County Sheriff's Office came forward with what turned out to be an important clue. A detective saw the forensic sketch of the Jane Doe and found the victim's "uniquely long face" was similar to that of another woman named Rita Lange, according to Taylor.

"Our forensic artist also superimposed the photo of Rita Lang with an image of the decedent's skull, and it demonstrated a strong match. This method can't confirm positive identification, but Rita Lang soon became a very strong candidate for the decedent," Taylor said.

They were closer than ever to identifying the Jane Doe, but detectives soon came to the conclusion that the name Rita Lang was an alias.

Investigators finally cracked the case this year when they learned Rita Lang may have had ties to California. The sheriff's office gave their information to several media outlets in California, and within two hours of the story airing the victim's sister came forward to identify "Rita Lang."

The victim turned out to be a 26-year-old woman named Celia Victor, according to Taylor.

While officials are thrilled to have finally identified victim, they still don't know who was responsible for her death.

Anyone with information on the homicide of Celia Victor is asked to call Detective Norton of the Seattle Police Department Homicide Unit at 206-684-5555.

A detective saw the forensic sketch of the Jane Doe and found the victim's "uniquely long face" was similar to that of another woman named Rita Lange, according to Taylor.

Some of these guys are amazing. We've been watching "Investigative Discovery" and have been floored when one of these guys dredges up something from his memory which aids the case. That, and "The Hand of God" scenarios - as in one case where the sheriff stopped to watch some roadside turkeys (he was a hunter), noticed a trail leading away, spotted a piece of cloth that turned out to be the body of a women who had been reported missing.

If you stop and think of the the "could have beens" it makes you go Hmmm.
1) Just "happened" to be driving along that rural road (he wasn't searching for her then).
2) The turkeys just "happened" to walk up to the road just when he was passing. A few minutes/seconds later, he would have had no reason to stop.
3) He just "happened" to notice the trail and "happened" to spot that flash of color in the brush.

Some of these shows have a warning that actors are used and some parts are fictionalized, so it might have been just the result of a good crime writer, yet . . .

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