Authorities have finally identified the body of a woman who was found decapitated in a California vineyard in March 2011, thanks to DNA testing.
The Kern County Sheriff’s Office said on Thursday that 64-year-old Ada Beth Kaplan of Canyon Country, California, was identified as the woman found in an Arvin grape vineyard on March 29, 2011.
Kaplan’s head and thumbs had been removed, and her body drained of blood by the time she was found and recovered by authorities, according to the DNA Doe Project, which helped in identifying the California woman.
After a postmortem examination, the manner of death was determined to be a homicide, according to the sheriff’s office. However, attempts to identify her remained unsuccessful until last week.
KGET-TV spoke with the former sheriff’s spokesman who worked the case in 2011, Ray Pruitt. He told the outlet that the crime scene was disturbing and “creepy.”
“Why did they take the time to drain the blood from the body? The crime scene itself was very clean,” Pruitt told the media outlet. “Honestly, it looked like somebody had taken a mannequin, removed the head of the mannequin, and posed it on the dirt road.”
The woman was buried in Union Cemetery in Bakersfield after investigators worked every lead they could to identify her and failed, including looking into two missing person cases and creating a national DNA profile for her.
“The gruesome scene haunted investigators, who worked diligently to identify the remains but ran out of leads,” the DNA Doe Project said in a statement.
However, in July 2020, the DNA Doe Project and the coroner’s office partnered together to use genetic genealogy techniques to begin building a family tree that could help identify the victim.
Three years later, two potential family members were identified, and after they provided DNA samples, Kaplan was identified.
An interview with the family resulted in investigators discovering a missing person report was never filed for Kaplan. Her suspected killer remains unknown at this time.