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Howard County Police ID 1971 Jane Doe, Reunite Her Children Decades Later
For more than half a century, she was known only as “Jane Doe.”
Her beaten body was found in a Howard County field in 1971, She died days later, was never identified, and her name was lost to time.
For 54 years, the case gathered dust — the police department's oldest cold case homicide.
Now police say they finally know who she was.
Authorities announced Wednesday, Sept. 4, that DNA profiling has revealed the victim as Sadie Belle Murray, born in 1924 in Pennsylvania, who at the time of her death went by Sarah Belle Sharkey.
And in a stunning twist, detectives also tracked down her …