PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — For more than 30 years, detectives have tried to identify a young woman found on the property of an abandoned distillery in Bensalem.
A couple walking in the woods near the Publicker distillery in January of 1988 looked down a concrete vat and saw a skeleton.
"She did have a chipped tooth," described Bensalem Detective Chris McMullin.
"And you can tell by her clothing that, you know, it was definitely a while. She wasn't just recently put there because the clothing was very worn and tattered."
They estimate she had been there for about three to five years — and she was pregnant, with a baby girl.
"As investigators, we want to find out the truth," said McMullin, who works on cold cases. He picked up the file in 2004. "I don't like loose ends."
Through the years, they've had her face sculpted as a bust and pulled DNA, adding her to the national database CODIS.
"If another agency, or our agency puts in a family reference sample of somebody that has a missing family member, we would potentially get a DNA match," McMullin explained.
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The detective has a few theories, but is determined to find out the identity of the woman, now nicknamed Publicker Jane Doe.
"I just don't believe that anybody deserves to just be found like that, and then just wind up in Potter's Field without a name. She was a person," he said.
"Somebody’s got to be missing her. Even if her parents are deceased, there's got to be somebody. It would just mean a lot to me, because I don't want her to be forgotten."
You can hear the entire story above on the latest episode of the KYW Newsradio original podcast "Gone Cold." Subscribe on the RADIO.COM app, or wherever you get podcasts.