Tucson mother ID'd as Florida's 1969 'Trunk Lady' homicide victim through DNA
A woman found dead in a trunk 53 years ago in Florida has been identified through DNA as a mother of five from Tucson, leaving authorities now looking for her killer.
Officers on Oct. 31, 1969, discovered the remains of a woman wrapped in a plastic bag placed in a black steamer trunk in a wooded area behind a restaurant, according to St. Petersburg Police.
Partially clothed in a pajama top, the woman had injuries to her head and had been strangled with a man’s Western-style Bolo tie, police said. The unidentified woman earned the moniker of the “Trunk Lady” who was “St. Petersburg's oldest and most infamous cold case victim,” police said.
The "Trunk Lady" has now been identified as Sylvia June Atherton, 41, of Tucson, police said in a Tuesday morning statement on Facebook.
Investigators match remains to woman
Othram Inc., a Houston-area forensic lab, identified the victim as Atherton by yielding a DNA profile in April through a hair and skin sample taken from an initial autopsy, police said.
The lab's CEO and founder David Mittelman told The Arizona Republic that Atherton’s children were found through distant relatives who had consented to law enforcement using DNA information they submitted to a genealogical database.
Forensic genealogists then laid out a family tree, working backwards to find who might be genetically related to those identified individuals, but whose whereabouts were possibly unknown.
Through “process of elimination working with investigators, we stumbled across this woman who was unaccounted for genetically,” Mittelman said.
DNA profiles from her children confirmed her identity, according to police.
The search for her identity through DNA stemmed back to 2010 when her body was exhumed from a grave marked as “Jane Doe” at a St. Petersburg cemetery, according to police. However, teeth and bone samples were found to be too degraded to use, police noted.
St. Petersburg Police Detective Wallace Pavelski had located Atherton’s daughter, who was 9 at the time of her mother's disappearance, according to the Facebook statement.
Killer still unknown
Her daughter said Atherton left Tucson for Chicago with her husband, a younger daughter, an adult son, an adult daughter and son-in law, according to police. The 9-year-old and an 11-year-old son of the victim stayed with their father from a previous marriage in Tucson, police said. The adult son eventually returned to Tucson to live with them, police added.
Pavelski learned the husband Atherton moved to Chicago with died in 1999 in Las Vegas without any mention of his marriage to the victim in court records, police said.
And authorities still do not know who killed Atherton.
Her daughters who left to move to Chicago with her – then 5-year-old Kimberly Anne Brown and then 20-year-old Donna Lindhurst – have not been located and authorities think they may have additional information on the case. Lindhurst’s husband was named David Lindhurst, police mentioned.
Anyone with information on the daughters’ whereabouts or on Atherton’s homicide is asked to call Detective Pavelski at 727-893-4823.
Reach breaking news reporter Jose R. Gonzalez at jose.gonzalez@gannett.com or on Twitter @jrgzztx.
Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: DNA IDs Tucson mom as Florida's 1969 'Trunk Lady' homicide victim
