2017/07/13

Orlando Sentinel July 9, 2017: Rarely used test could help ID transgender woman in 30-year-old Lake County cold case

Tamara Dale feels like she knows “Julie Doe.”

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office sergeant has been investigating the 30-year-old cold case for about two years — but has yet to learn Julie’s real name.

Dale’s interest in the mystery spiked after the remains were tested again as part of a statewide initiative to revisit unsolved cases.

Advances in technology revealed the victim in the 1988 case was not a woman who officials originally thought had given birth to multiple children, but instead a transgender woman who was born biologically male.

Dale, 37, said the bizarre mixup sent them back to square one.

But so far nothing has led to the woman’s identity or why she was found dead 30 feet off County Road 474 in a rural area of southern Lake County in between State Road 33 and U.S. Highway 27.

The person found had breast implants and was taking hormones, which led to the misidentification. She is estimated as being between 24 and 33 years old.

“It’s a whole new case for us,” Dale said. “She has spent the last 30 years in a lab. This is a new chance to solve this case.”

“I don’t think she had an easy life with being transgender in the 1980s, and she obviously died without any sort of respect,” Dale said. “I think she deserves a break and her family needs to know what happened to her.”

She asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to run the familial DNA test in mid-June. The process runs the victim’s DNA profile through a database that will look for partial matches, which could help locate family members. The procedure is fairly new and only a handful of states, including Florida, allow the tests. more