Twenty years ago this past November 4th, the nude and partially decomposed body of a young female was recovered on the west side of US Hwy 77, 6.7 miles south of Rockdale near Yegua Creek by the Milam County Sheriff's Office. A local telephone company repairman at the time was working on telephone equipment when he came upon the body lying in tall grass in the bar ditch. She had three to five blows to the back of her head which Medical Examiners listed as the cause of her death.

The female, whose identity remains a mystery today, now has a face to possibly help in her identification. On November 4, 1986, the remains were sent to Dallas for an autopsy and were later buried in 1987 in an unmarked pauper's grave. Sheriff Charlie West said that Chief Deputy Ted Retchloff and Investigator Greg Kouba went to Dallas on November 6, 2006 with a search warrant to exhume the skeletal remains. They were taken to the Dallas County Medical Examiner for a forensic autopsy and anthropological exam in search of more information on the girl and to obtain a DNA sample from one of her femur bones. "This technology was not as available then as is today", Sheriff West said. Once DNA is extracted, it will be entered into the national CODIS (Combined DNA Indexing System) database.

Over the past several years, states have obtained DNA profiles from family members of missing

persons and had these samples entered in the database in hopes of identifying missing persons and unidentified remains. West said that Kouba contacted Su Knight, a forensic artist with the Williamson County District Attorney's Office in Georgetown in hopes of obtaining a 2 dimensional drawing.

Using measurements from the skull, the autopsy, and the hair mat recovered from the grave, Mrs. Knight was able to prepare a forensic sketch of what the victim possibly looked like. Although it cannot be an absolute and accurate depiction, the drawing may resemble what the victim looked like. Facial features are derived from the measurements of the eyes, nasal opening, race, dentals and size of the skull according to Investigator Greg Kouba.

Kouba said that the autopsy performed last November indicated that the young girl was between the ages of 12-16 years of age at the time of her death and possibly of Hispanic origin and that she suffered from spina bifida. The girl may have walked with a limp or had abnormal posture. Serious tooth decay was prevalent throughout and with no prior dental work, the young girl was probably in a lot of pain according to medical examiners.

Deputy Kouba said that the drawing has been added to the DPS missing persons clearinghouse, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's websites. It has also been sent to the Doenetwork http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/542uftx.html which is a non-profit organization for North American missing and unidentified persons. In addition, Kouba said that the DNA profile and sketch will be submitted to the Mexican Government's SIRLI (System for the Identification of Remains and Localization of Individuals) database.

"Our victim has a family somewhere". "She is someone's daughter, brother or sister". "Our goal is to at least find out who she is and re-unite her with her family", Kouba added. "If that can be accomplished, then we'll start looking for who was responsible for her death".

The murder is one of two unsolved cases over the past twenty years which have been investigated by the Milam County Sheriff's Office. On October 3, 1989, the body of a black female, Clarissa Carvett "Vett" Turner, 18 of Bryan was found under the Brazos River bridge on US 79 at the county line. The victim had last been seen in Bryan, Texas the previous day. She had been sexually assaulted and manually strangled before being left under the bridge in Milam County.

Kouba said that Milam County Crime Stoppers will pay a cash reward of $1,000.00 for information which leads to the arrest and grand jury indictment on the person or persons responsible for the deaths of either of these two young women. "We don't want your name, just your information". You will be assigned a special code number and no one will ask your name. If you have information on either of these two murder cases, call Milam County Crime Stoppers at 1-888-697-TIPS.