Bridgeport 'Jane Doe' Killer Remains a Mystery

By DAWN A. MICELI, Correspondent

“Jane Doe” was someone’s daughter, and someone may have even referred to her as “Mom.” Her ghastly demise 14 years ago seemingly eradicated every trace of her identity. A “missing person” search failed her as well. The last blow may well be the ambiguity that surrounds her cause of death, labeled in police files as “pending.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I say she was murdered,” said Bridgeport Police Detective Heitor Teixeira, an 18-year veteran who is currently assigned to cold cases in the department. “We figured she was a drug carrier, and probably not even from this area – I wish that we had more. It’d be nice to have some closure.”

It is that closure aspect that is compelling Teixeira to reinvestigate the meager evidence initially recovered from the site where Jane Doe’s charred body was found. Even a recent setback in the case – the body has now been buried by the chief medical examiner’s office after having lain in the state morgue for 10 years – has done little to deter the detective from exploring all avenues. Exhumation of the body for updated forensic testing is a possibility.

A 911 fire call came in to the Bridgeport Fire Department at about 5:30 a.m. on June 5, 1993. Two people smelled smoke near where they worked and called to report it. Emergency crews responded to a vacant parking lot at Lafayette Street and Railroad Avenue, an overgrown area right near the highway that sported the ripest kind of kindling: brush, tall grass, and small trees. The fire had been burning for a while.

Once the flames were under control, firefighters came upon a gruesome discovery. Amid the debris that littered the area were the charred remains of a faceless body, the hands and feet burned away from the stumps that remained in the regions where there once were arms and legs.

In the police report, first responders reported the overpowering smell of gasoline emanating from the area. A book of matches was found near the body, as well as an antifreeze jug containing some gasoline. The victim had been doused with the fuel and set on fire.

Michael Kerwin, a former Bridgeport police sergeant who had worked on the case, recalled the intense heat that so engulfed the body that investigators were never able to learn whether the victim died before the fire or during it. “They (her killer or killers) had to flip her over a couple of times for being that burned,” said Kerwin, who now works for the state’s attorney’s office in Fairfield. “She was rolled over and doused again and again.”

Bridgeport police had to secure the services of a forensic anthropologist just to ascertain some of the basic genetic makeup of the victim. According to Teixeira, that person was Dr. Albert Harper, the executive director of the Dr. Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science.

Harper determined that Jane Doe was probably a black female, between the ages of 25 and 35, with a slight build, between five-foot-one and five-foot-four. A composite facial reconstruction was never an option for the department because of the condition of the corpse.

An investigation by the fire marshal’s office confirmed that “gas or acceleranttype materials (were) used to cause the fire.” At 5:30 in the morning, police say there were not many gas stations open in the area, save for the one on Park Avenue and State Street. There, a station attendant recalled two men who had come in with a beer bottle, requesting that it be filled with gasoline. The attendant refused; but 15 to 20 minutes later, the men were back with an antifreeze jug and purchased one dollar’s worth of gas. They chucked the beer bottle into the station’s trash can.

The attendant was able to provide police with details on the two men: one was a black male of average height and build in his late teens to early 20s. His companion was said to be a Hispanic male of similar height, build, and age. A department sketch artist came up with two composite drawings of the suspects, but the investigation failed to locate the men, let alone bring up charges on anyone.

No one ever came looking for Jane Doe, and a nationwide “missing person” search failed to garner a match. “We had dozens and dozens of ‘hits’ come back from across the country, but nothing ever matched,” said Kerwin. “There was always something wrong – like the eye color or something.”

However, a case currently in the news triggered Kerwin’s memory of the young woman who was never identified. Emanuel Lovell Webb is charged with killing four women in Bridgeport during the same timeframe as Jane Doe’s death. Webb was extradited from Georgia by authorities in Connecticut, and Kerwin figured he should be questioned about the burn victim as well – just in case. “When they brought him back here, I told Teixeira to ask him about this girl,” Kerwin said. “If he’s going to start spilling his guts, they may as well ask about her.”

That idea did not pan out, but it did compel Teixeira to reexamine whatever evidence there was in the 14-year-old case. He saw that as of 1998, the body was still at the chief medical examiner’s office in Farmington. A subsequent call to the office revealed that in 2003, the body was buried in Bloomfield at the expense of a local funeral home. According to a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner, the State of Connecticut does not have a “pauper’s grave.” In addition, “We do not cremate someone who is unidentified,” said the spokeswoman, who declined to give her name. “She was kept here 10 years.” The spokeswoman added that a court order would allow for the body to be disinterred.

Even with the body, said Elaine Pagliaro, the assistant director of the state’s forensic laboratory in Meriden, someone from Jane Doe’s past would have had to have reported her missing. “If there are no relatives who submitted samples, we could put it in (the database) and never get a hit,” Pagliaro said. “To identify an unknown individual, there needs to be some record of that person.”

Even without a body, there is other evidence that can be examined, Teixeira said. There were fingerprints on the beer bottle and on the matchbook recovered at the scene. “That’s probably the most compelling thing we have,” said Teixeira. Several teeth were also preserved, “and that’s another avenue we can look into,” he said. The detective also plans to contact Harper, the original forensic anthropologist, to enlist his aid in the reexamination of evidence.

Kerwin agrees the passing of time may have been enough to create a new opening in the case. “Forensics has come a long way since then, and there are samples on file,” he said. “That one was always – ‘Who was that girl?’ It was just a lonely south-end lot.” Jane Doe, buried in a nameless plot in

Bloomfield, without so much as a date of birth or next of kin to define her lineage or indeed her existence, died 14 years ago. Her case is still very much “open,” and anyone with any possible clues is asked to contact the Bridgeport police.

(Contact Dawn at d.miceli@thejusticejournal.com)