Don’t Look Behind You

wrote in his first report on the unknown deceased person. “Approximately halfway up the hill, the road tops out and levels into a gravel pit area. There is what appears to be a parking area. There is evidence of many people having come to this area for target practice as well as picnics. There are numerous fired cartridge casings of various calibers strewn around on the ground, and there is a campfire area. Approximately thirty feet south of this campfire, there is a trail [where someone] had carried or dragged a body to the open edge of the embankment. From the edge of that embankment to the victim’s head was about thirteen feet.”
    There was little that could be done in the icy darkness, so the scene was protected until daylight. With winter approaching, dawn would come slowly, but the troopers could see that the dead person’s head was below the feet, and the arms were outstretched and over the head.
    What was obviously the most-used trail into the brush had no matted-down vegetation. A narrower path, however, had crushed willow brush. It appeared that someone had taken that route and then pushed or thrown the victim over. Dropping to their hands and knees, the investigators gathered hairs and minute fibers that clung to the willows. They also found a pair of panty hose, size small.
    They determined that the victim was a woman, but it wasn’t likely the panty hose belonged to her; she was a good-sized woman, close to six feet tall, and probably weighing at least 170 pounds. She had been shot in the head once, possibly more times.
    But who she was, none of them knew.
    There were several establishments of one sort or another along the highway, and trooper Steve Heckman stopped at every one that was open to see if anyone might know the woman’s identity. He began at the Clear Sky Lodge, and proceeded to Roscoe’s, the Corner Bar, Moochers Bar & Grill, Coghill’s store, and Parker’s Patch. The Dew Drop Inn and the Tamarac Inn were closed, but Heckman did get one possible ID at Moochers.
    A female bartender recalled a woman who matched some of the details in the dead woman’s description: “She was from Anchorage and she sometimes traveled between Anchorage and Fairbanks with a man who looked Spanish. He drove a new black car,” the bartender said. “I thought she might be a hooker—because of the way she dressed, and because of what she said about the neighborhood she frequented in Anchorage. I think she is half white and half black, almost six feet tall, slender and well built. She’s probably in her twenties, dark brown curly shoulder-length hair. Very fine facial features. Oh, and a sharp nose.”
    This woman was a most perceptive witness, with a great memory for details. “She usually wears expensive clothing and good jewelry—she has a large diamond dinner ring and chain necklaces with coins on them. Her nails are long, and they’re painted orange.”
    “Anything else?” Heckman asked.
    “She speaks Spanish. I think—I’m not sure—and she may have come from New Orleans originally.”
    The unknown victim was also tall, and she had shoulder-length curly brown hair. However, she’d worn blue jeans, a cheap polyester blouse, and J.C. Penney sneakers. Her nails weren’t long and polished; they looked to be the blunt-cut nails of a woman who did physical work. Although the bartender at Moochers was a superb witness, she must have been describing another woman passing through.
    There was one way they might be able to identify the nameless victim: she had had extremely good dental work done. Trooper Rod Harvey took photos of her teeth and gave copies to five dentists who practiced nearby.
    None of them recognized the work. Troopers tried to find a match with a half-dozen more dentists, but gleaned nothing that would identify the victim.
    On October 17, 1978, Dr. Michael Probst arrived from Anchorage to perform a postmortem examination of the dead woman. He felt she was twenty-five to thirty years old, but it would be impossible to accurately pinpoint her date and time of death. Her body was frozen when she was found, and still somewhat frozen as her autopsy began. Ordinarily, the stiffening of muscles after death—rigor mortis—can begin a few hours to even twelve to eighteen hours after death. A body’s muscles may be immovable from any time from twenty-four to thirty-six or forty-eight hours after death before the stiffening relaxes.
    The Jane Doe victim’s rigor mortis had come and